Help us to celebrate 25 years of wildlife rescue

As well as being extremely busy in the hospital at the moment with baby birds & mammals coming in by the dozen, we are also trying to organise our 25th Anniversary Open Day which is being held at the Centre on Sunday 7th June.

We are hoping for good weather & need as many people as possible to come along on the day to help us celebrate this special milestone. Finances are strained this year, mainly because of the current global recession, donations are down & all charities are feeling the pinch. Show your support for our work by joining us on the day, see behind the scenes inside our Hospital, where we are looking after around 300 animals at the moment.

There will be loads of attractions: slideshows, charity stalls, loads of games for the children, fun dog show, raffle, tombolas, beer tent, cider, refreshments, live music, birds of prey static display, crafts & much, much more.

The day will run from 11am - 4pm so please, please show us your support & help us to make it a day to remember.

Leveret release 6 May 2009

Below are before and after photos showing a leveret when it first came in to the centre about 2 months ago aged just a couple of days old, and photos taken today when we took him for release at Slimbridge.

It was amazing to see him free in the fields, instinctively hiding in patches of long grass and behind mounds and tussocks, dashing between them, keeping low to the ground when he was out in the open. Considering he had never seen open spaces in his life, it just proved that most of a wild animals behaviour is instinctive and doesn't need to be taught, just perfected with time.

The release of an animal that has had so much time and effort put into it truly is the best part of wildlife rehabilitation.

Badly injured muntjac fawn

We have now had a third muntjac deer fawn brought in, I estimate only 10-14 days old. He has been badly attacked by something, my guess being a dog but I can't be sure. He has some bite wounds to his head and neck which aren't too serious but he also has a fractured skull which makes the prognosis for his survival pretty poor.
Feeding him is the most difficult task as I have to be so careful when handling him because of his head injury and he gets so stressed when he is handled that it has been impossible to bottle feed him like the other two muntjacs we have. At the moment he has to be anaesthetised in order for us to tube feed him without causing him too much stress.
I will keep you updated on his progress and we are all keeping our fingers crossed but I am not getting my hopes up too much.

A word of warning...again. Please DO NOT feed bread to birds in your garden. We have had three cases lately where people have picked up a newly-fledged bird (when they should all have been left alone), and fed them bread for over 24 hours before bringing them in to us. Bread does them no good at all, in fact it can often kill a bird, especially if this is all it is fed. If a bird really does need rescuing, get it to a rescue centre immediately where it will be fed the correct food from the start.