At the end of a quiet dead-end
street in Westerly, a three-story brick house is surrounded by a maze of
shed-like structures that seem only slightly out of place. The largest is
40-feet long and 12-feet tall and sheathed almost entirely in wire screening.
Inside, laying on a tree stump, is the carcass of a half-eaten squirrel. And
perched on a beam above the carcass are two female red-tailed hawks – Griffin,
a 7-year-old with a deformed beak, and Matrix, 15, who has a traumatic head
injury from being struck by a golf ball at a country club in Massachusetts.
The two birds periodically fly the length of the
cage to exercise their wings, then swoop
down to peck at the squirrel carcass.
Every year, one of them lays an infertile egg, and the birds take turns
incubating it until they realize it’s not going to hatch.
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| Baby cottontails (James Jones) |
Adjacent to the flight cage are a
dozen 8-by-10-foot cages. In one sits a turkey vulture named Lurch with
neurological damage caused by ingesting something poisonous at the Charlestown
landfill. Next door is Krypto, a peregrine falcon born on the Superman building
in Providence but who flew into a window of the downtown Blue Cross Blue Shield
building, breaking its wrist and causing a head injury. Nearby, two barred owls
perch in a darkened section of their cage, one-eyed Wink and his partner
Boytoy, who was rescued after being struck by a car.
The newest cage, built last year
with the help of a local eagle scout, houses a red-tailed hawk that struck a
window so hard that the homeowner thought it was a gunshot.
“It was paralyzed for 11 days, but on the 12th
day we arrived to see it standing up, and it’s slowly getting better,” says
Vivian Maxson, who operates the Born to be Wild Nature Center with her husband
John. “It now can fly the length of the cage, and we’re hopeful it can be
released.”
Most of the birds at the nature
center have permanent injuries and would not survive in the wild, but some are
destined to be returned to the outdoors when they heal.
The Maxson’s started Born to be Wild
after taking a wildlife rehabilitation class through the Rhode Island
Department of Environmental Management and apprenticing with a certified
rehabilitator.
“That person starts you off with easy cases, like
baby squirrels or opossums, then you get bumped up to the next level and you’re
on your own,” Vivian says. “I really like the feeling of giving back to nature.
Man’s impact causes so much harm that it’s a way to try to balance it out.”
“All it takes is one or two
enjoyable cases, and it strengthens us and keeps us going,” adds John.
The Maxsons have become the state
experts at rehabilitating raptors, so almost every hawk or owl in Rhode Island that
is found injured or unable to care for itself usually finds its way to their
nature center. Every day, they provide the birds with their preferred meal –
dead mice and rats for some, squirrels and rabbits for others – and assess the
health of each to determine when they are ready for release. When they have
time, the Maxsons also host tours of the nature center or bring some of the
birds to summer camps and retirement homes for educational programs.
About 70 hawks and owls spend time
at Born to be Wild each year, and about 65 percent survive to be released, a
better success rate than the national average. Some must be euthanized because
of the seriousness of their injuries.
According to John, the most
difficult hawks to care for are ospreys.
“They only eat live fish, so every
day I have to go fishing,” he says with a smile. “Anyone who visits us in the
summer, we hand them a fishing pole and tell them to go catch some fish.”
....Continued in the October 2017 issue of Rhode Island Monthly magazine.
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