Helping Them Speak: babies!

Baby season is still in full force so I thought I'd share some pictures.

These are cedar waxwings who will be fledging soon. All songbirds go through a stage call the fledgling stage where they jump out of the next and spend up to a week on the ground learning how to feed themselves and fly. Their parents are still around, feeding them on the ground, but less often (tough love;) and won't come around if you are outside watching the babies. This is why we get so many fledglings into the center--people think they are abandoned when mom and dad are simply waiting for the predators (aka humans) to go away so they can feed their babies again.

We know these are cedar waxwings b/c the mouth color is a hot pink with iridescent strips on the sides (much more striking in person!)

Compare that to these nestling house sparrows. Not all baby birds look this different though. The younger they are, the harder they are to tell apart and sometimes we simply have to wait until they grow up until we can ID their species.

Since fledglings are like "teenagers", they aren't the smartest lot.

This fledgling/juvenile piliated woodpecker came in with hindlimb weakness/tail paralysis (likely from spinal trauma) and a foreign body in his stomach (see xray below--the white sharp edged trapezoid towards the right/bottom is a piece of glass/plastic). I had to go in surgically and remove it from his stomach. He recovered from his surgery well, and is VERY slowly regaining movement in his legs. I'm hoping he'll fully recover so we can release him, but his tail needs to follow suit...

This is a young common nighthawk (VERY cool species--sort of like a large chimney swift- they eat only when flying through the air catching bugs and their legs are positioned to cling to walls-->so they can't stand when on the ground...weird). He was doing well in the nursery until he became very bloated one evening. Xray revealed he had 10-11 stones in his stomach that were obstructing him. He needed emergency surgery. Unfortunately, he died during surgery:( he was very sick, so it wasn't surprising he didn't make it.

Below are some baby opossums inside their mother's pouch! They are about the size of a dime when they are born; they climb into her pouch and latch on to a teat. Opossums have 13 nipples so can accomodate many young.