Merry Christmas & Thank-you from Vale

On behalf of everyone at Vale Wildlife I would like to wish all our supporters a Very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2008.

I haven't got a lot of time to write posts at the moment as we are very short-staffed at present plus we are working our Christmas rota now so more staff are off than at normal times.

Our Small Mammal Room is still full to bursting with juvenile, underweight hedgehogs although a large number of the bigger hedgehogs we had have now been fostered out to willing volunteers and we are very grateful to everyone who has offered to help us out by taking them on.

We have had a few birds of prey in lately, a couple of tawny owls, both with leg fractures, a barn owl and a buzzard.

The one bird that everyone associates with Christmas is the robin. We had a very sorry one in the other day. Someone had put rodent glue traps out because of a rat problem. These things are unfortunately legal but in my opinion should be banned as they cause major suffering to anything that gets caught on them. Legally they are supposed to be placed where nothing but the target species (rats in this case) can get access to them but this is often ignored.

The poor robin had flown down onto this trap and his legs and wings had immediately stuck fast to the glue.

We managed to free him from the trap but not without the loss of many of his wing and body feathers. He has survived but will need to stay with us for several months as he will not be releasable until his feathers have regrown fully.

Very briefly in this short post:

The hedgehog found on the lit bonfire causing burns to her side is still recovering here. Her wounds have almost healed now and she is due for reassessment later this week.

The tawny owl which had a leg fracture pinned has now had the pin removed, the fracture is stable and he has started to use his foot well - we are hopeful that he will be releasable shortly.

The merganser is still with us and doing well but because of his feather problems we cannot put him outside until the warmer spring weather, as he has a problem with waterproofing and quickly gets chilled at the moment.

I will bring you more news within the next few days, time-permitting.

Enjoy your Christmas.

Vale Wildlife goes International!!!

You don't realise just how much you rely on accessing the internet until something goes wrong! Ours is now up and running again after nearly a week without it and it's been a nightmare. No emails - in a way that has been great as I haven't missed the 50+ junk emails I receive at Vale every day, but important emails have had to wait until I could get to another computer to read them; we use the internet a lot for looking up information about animals, their injuries, treatments etc; staff wages are paid via the internet; a lot of the food, disinfectants, medical supplies etc are ordered online. We have had to go back to the old fashioned telephone ordering days!! And of course, I haven't been able to write my Blog!

Well, I'm back now and have to tell you about the strange telephone call I had today - a man phoned saying that he wanted some advice on an injured bird he had found. Sounds straightforward enough? Firstly I asked him what he thought the problem was and he explained that it had crash-landed onto a building site where he was working, sustaining an injury to its wing. Ok, how serious did the injury look? It had what looked like just minor grazing to the 'elbow' joint of the wing, it was bleeding a little bit but had now stopped. The bird was holding the wing normally and seemed to be able to move it perfectly. It all sounded quite simple and nothing too serious.
'Do you know what sort of bird it is?' I asked.
'A pelican' came the reply!!
Ah, not a bird we deal with very often at Vale - in fact, not surprisingly, we have never had an injured pelican in. I started to wonder whether someone was playing a practical joke on me but as the conversation went on, I realised it was genuine.
How on earth did a pelican end up in the UK? It must be an escapee.
'Whereabouts are you?' I asked.
'Kazakhstan' the chap replied! Wow - I knew that we were fairly well known now, certainly throughout the UK and parts of Europe but Kazakhstan - I must admit I had to look on the world map to find out exactly where it was, I had a feeling it was somewhere near Russia, and it was!
It turns out the man is a British citizen, working on the building site over there and the pelican had tried to land on what it thought was water, but it wasn't and it had grazed its wing in the process. I explained that with such a bird and an injury which sounded so minor we would probably just clean it up, give it a long-acting antibiotic and release it straight away as the longer it was kept in captivity the more stress it was likely to suffer, causing even more damage to it. Unfortunately although there was a vet locally, he was unwilling to look at the pelican and so antibiotics were not an option. I explained that if we were put in that predicament we would probably just release the bird back out without antibiotic cover but not knowing whether pelicans should be in that area at this time of year I thought it would be best to put him on to a vet with knowledge of non-British species to make sure that the the pelican received the best treatment. I gave him the telephone number of the International Zoo Vets in Yorkshire who travel all over the world treating and advising on exotic species. They have been very helpful when we have contacted them for advice in the past so I am sure that they would have helped or found a contact number for an expert in that area who knew a bit more about pelicans than me - that wouldn't be hard!!!

All publicity is good publicity..

Hedgehogs are one of the British publics' favourite wild animals, if not the most favourite.
This has once again been proved following the fantastic response we have had to our appeal for tins of food for all the underweight juveniles we have at the moment.
Please keep your donations of food and funds coming so that we can give the best possible care to our animals.
Many, many thanks to those of you who have responded so magnificently to the appeal.
The publicity is still coming - tonight there will be a piece on Midlands Today (6.30pm) and tomorrow morning we are featuring live on BBC Breakfast from around 6am until 9.15am (so much for my lie-in!!!!)

Of course, other casualties are being brought in to us besides hedgehogs. We received a call about a badger on Monday which was in someones garden during the day, just lying out in the open. By the time we reached the address, the finder had (somehow!) managed to get the badger into a dustbin where he was sitting just peering up at the top. The chap said that it had tried to run off while he was waiting for us to arrive so he had put his foot in front of it to stop it going!!! He was either very brave or oblivious to the potential injuries he could have received from such an action!
Apart from some fairly old puncture wounds to his neck, probably dog injuries, we could find no other wounds but his behaviour suggested that he has sustained a blow to the head, probably from a car, so he is undergoing treatment at the moment.

The hedgehog which was rescued from a burning bonfire several weeks ago still continues to make progress - about three quarters of her burns have now healed and although she is quite scarred we are now confident that she will eventually be released back into the wild - but well away from any bonfires!!

Back to all the Tiggywinkles......will write again soon.

Normal service will be resumed......

Apologies for the break in posts, I have been away. I am back in the Hospital tomorrow (3rd) and will resume regular posts as soon as possible.

All I can report at the moment is:

• We are now caring for over 130 hedgehogs.
• We are using well over 1,000 tins of pet food every week.
• An appeal has gone out for donations of tins as our stocks have all gone.
• We are looking for volunteers to look after hedgehogs to take the pressure off our staff and our resources.

I would like to thank everyone who has donated tins of food and who have made a donation to Vale, either by post, by telephone credit card or via our website where donations can be made through Paypal.

Without your support we would not be able to continue our work and we rely on the regular support of you, the public, as we struggle to raise the necessary funds to care for the casualties brought in to us.

Thank-you from the Trustees, staff and volunteers at Vale Wildlife.