Knowing When to Help 



The first rule of CPR is to make sure 

 that the person you're giving it to needs 

 it. Someone who appears unconscious is 

 not necessarily in cardiac distress. It is 

 also true that a lone fledgling bird hop- 

 ping around your yard does not an orphan 

 make. 



Good intentions often go awry when 

 humans try to "help" wildlife that are 

 only doing what comes naturally. 



The aquarist at the N.C. Aquarium in 

 Manteo tells of a well-meaning man who 

 spied a harbor seal napping on one of the 

 state's northern beaches. 



"He threw this seal in the toolbox in 

 back of his truck and brought it here, 

 thinking he was doing the animal a fa- 

 vor," says Olivia Burrus. "The only thing 

 that was wrong with the seal is it had 

 hauled out to rest a couple of days. We 

 released him, and fortunately 

 he was fine." 



A woman recently called 

 91 1 when she spotted a whale 

 about 100 feet off the beach 

 that she thought "couldn't 

 breathe and was in distress," 

 Burrus recalls. "But the whale 

 was just up on the (sand)bar, 

 rolling around, playing and 

 having a good time, and she 

 called 911." 



And though people are 

 becoming more educated 

 about respecting turtle nesting 

 sites, it didn't stop a vacation- 

 ing couple recently from trans- 

 porting four "orphaned" sea turtles from 

 a North Carolina beach to their Ohio 

 bathtub, Burrus says. 



"People's intentions are good, but 

 they just don't know," says Burrus. 



We also don't know how to keep 

 our hands off baby birds. Ninety percent 

 of the nestlings being raised by volun- 

 teers at the Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter 

 in Morehead City shouldn't be there. 



"There's a big misconception that 

 the public in general has about wild ani- 

 mals, and it's that they can't raise their 

 babies or they abandon their own babies," 

 says shelter staffer Cheryl Baptist. Well- 



An orphaned opossum at OWLS. 



Victoria Meshaw Hucks' red-tailed hawk, Ranger 



Baby screech owls get care in Wat ha. 



meaning folks bring in scads of nestlings 

 that were probably faring perfectly well in 

 their outdoor home. "We do a good job 

 here, but the parent can teach them things 

 that we can't teach them, like to be afraid 

 of people." 



If you see a young bird that appears 

 alone, hide from view and observe the 

 animal. More often than not, you'll see its 

 mother or father — which has probably 

 been watching from a careful distance — 

 return. 



"Birds are called fledglings when they 

 first start to fly. They don't fall out of the 

 nest; they jump out of the nest," says Bap- 

 tist. "The parent will continue to come 

 down and feed them for quite awhile after 

 they're out of the nest." 



If the bird is in the line of pedestrian 

 or automobile traffic, move it out of the 

 way or place it on a tree branch 

 close by. Contrary to myth, the 

 parent will not reject a bird 

 because it has been touched by 

 a human. If a bird has leaped 

 from a nest prematurely, return 

 it to the nest if it is within reach. 



"A lot of times you can 

 take a baby bird and put it in a 

 margarine tub strapped to the 

 side of a tree, and the mother 

 will come and feed it," says 

 Victoria Meshaw Hucks, a 

 Pender County wildlife 

 rehabilitator. "True abandon- 

 ment is more a fallacy than 

 anything else." 

 If an animal isn't raised properly, it 

 may be forever handicapped by a depen- 

 dence on people. Some young mammals 

 and birds — particularly deer, owls, crows 

 and blue jays — may "imprint" easily on 

 their human caretakers. 



"Whatever they focus on whenever 

 they start to focus — which is between 

 two to six weeks of life — they think 

 that's their parent and that's what they 

 are," says Baptist. "It can never be re- 

 versed. It doesn't sound harmful ... but if 

 you get a great homed owl who's im- 

 printed, he thinks he's a person. And 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 21 



