Our Resident Brown Booby

While we always try to rehabilitate birds, we do provide a home for birds too injured to return to the wild. One of our unique residents is a Brown Booby that schoolchildren in the Keys have come to know as Byron the Booby.

The Booby is a pelagic bird. Pelagic is a term that, according to Wikipedia, refers to the open sea or ocean not near the coast. In other words, they seldom touch land. They are sea birds in the most pure sense of the word.

When we received this bird, it was wrapped in fishline and very weak. The line had severely injured its right wing and leg and the infirmary staff did not think it would live. But, although he can't soar any longer above the sea, this bird recovered and is healthy.

Byron is part of our education outreach program. The bird seems to enjoy trips to schools and libraries to help everyone learn about this wonderful free-flying species. Here is link to the page on the Brown Booby at the Cornell Ornithology Website.

Our new Willet

We recently welcomed a species of bird we don't see very often in the Keys: a Willet. The Eastern Willet is a shore nesting bird. We have a lot of shoreline in the Keys, but it isn't great for nesting unless you are a bird who likes mangroves.

This Willet came in with a broken wing and the wing has been treated in our infirmary. Our goal, as always, is to rehabilitate the bird back into the wild so it can reproduce and strengthen the species.

You can find out more about the Willet at this link in Wikipedia and you can hear the call of the Willet at this link from the excellent Cornell Ornithology Website.