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“A lot of them are OK, but there were a lot of fractures, too.a lot of them fell 50, 60 feet.” “Normally we’ve been getting in 20 or 30 birds a week, so it was noticeably more,” she said. Tompkins said they ended up taking in 118 birds last week at their Oregon centre. “Given the temperature, it wasn’t surprising what happened, but I can't remember this ever happening before.” “Young Cooper’s hawks were just bailing out of nests, because it was so hot, and they’re downy chicks so they weren’t anywhere close to being able to fly,” she said. South of the border, a rehabilitation facility serving eastern Oregon and Washington State also saw an exceptionally high number of young birds being brought in during the heat wave, in particular Cooper’s hawks.īlue Mountain Wildlife Executive Director Lynn Tompkins said she was on the phone all day Monday and Tuesday of last week. We had to purchase extra food.”Īlong with money, the society accepts donations of wild game, including salmon and trout. “Our food bill basically skyrocketed,” he said. “Primarily right now, we have Merlin falcons, we have Cooper’s hawks, and we have bald eagles.”Īll of the rescued young birds are still being cared for, and Hope said the influx has definitely put a strain on resources. most of them were just young, just too young to be on the ground,” he said, and added it can leave them vulnerable to predators. “We did have a few that were injured and. Hope said the birds were mostly still in the nestling stage when the heat wave hit, meaning they can’t fly yet and are fuzzy-looking instead of fully feathered. They were falling out of the nest, jumping out the nests and a lot of the babies we did get unfortunately there were siblings that had perished within a few groups.” “Unfortunately the little guys, because it got so hot, they had no choice but to try and cool off and they were getting themselves into trouble. “We’re about 140 birds over this same period last time,” he said. OWL Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society General Manager Rob Hope said their Delta, B.C., facility experienced a “new high” in the number of baby birds they took in from around the province, compared to the same time last year. Wildlife rehabilitation centres in the Pacific Northwest saw a surge of baby hawks and other young birds needing care during last week’s record-breaking heat wave, and rescuers believe it’s because the nestlings were trying to escape the punishing heat.