The Spark: Would You Drive Six Hours to Save a Hummingbird?

Why this story matters: Amidst the constant noise of the modern world, it’s essential to pause and highlight the examples of human kindness and systemic progress that rarely receive the front-page attention they so richly deserve.

Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to conservation, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results.

Welcome back to The Spark, our monthly celebration of how people just like you are creating positive change, one meaningful step at a time. The Spark is generously supported by Laura Rice. Sign up to Reasons to be Cheerful’s weekly newsletter here and you’ll get The Spark in your inbox at the start of each month.

In this issue

🦅 Bird lovers respond to avian emergencies

🐸 A nightly frog shuttle makes migrations safer

📓 Enlisting wildlife watchers to record biodiversity

On patrol with the injured bird brigade

On a summer day in 2024, Faith Davis was maneuvering her SUV up a winding mountain road in central Vermont when from her trunk she heard a persistent thump-thump-thump.

Her passenger had woken up.

A short time earlier, she’d picked up a juvenile bald eagle that had been electrocuted on a power line and fallen to the ground. Davis put the unconscious eagle in a tote with air holes and began the hour-and-a-half drive to the wild bird rehab at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, or VINS. When she arrived at the clinic, the bird emerged, with burn marks but otherwise poised to make a recovery. “It was very wide awake and very agitated,” Davis recalls.

Davis is one of about 100 trained volunteers VINS dispatches when the rehabilitation center gets a report of an injured bird in Vermont, New Hampshire and eastern upstate New York. These transporters are part of a nationwide corps of avian emergency responders, who often drive long distances to contain, collect and safely transport raptors, songbirds, waterfowl and other birds to rehabilitation facilities for medical treatment. The volunteers help wildlife rehab centers overcome a major hurdle: getting injured birds into clinics quickly enough for recovery and release.

Birds of all kinds across North America are facing challenges, often because of human activity. Habitat loss is driving declines in the populations of the most common species. Infrastructure is another contributor: Researchers estimate that more than a billion birds a year die because of collisions with buildings.

At VINS in Vermont, many of the more than 1,000 wild birds that come in each year have injuries related to humans, like collisions with cars, diseases from bird feeders, or attacks by house pets, according to VINS avian rehabilitator Celia Reinhardt.

The center takes any kind of wild bird, but often gets reports from people many hours away. If a caller can’t bring the bird themselves, VINS rehabilitators turn to their roster of trained transporters to see who is nearby and available.

“If we didn’t have volunteers,” says Reinhardt, “it would be very, very difficult to actually get that bird care.”

Similar networks support rehabilitators from Minnesota to Alabama to Hawaii. In Washington in 2023, Spokane Audubon’s volunteers drove 5,000 miles, responding to 249 incidents.

Davis decided to volunteer about four years ago. A lifelong nature lover, she frequented VINS as a visitor with her granddaughter. She liked the idea of being able to contribute around the schedule of her IT job.

In an online training, Davis learned the basics: if you need to capture a bird, throw a sheet over them, and wear gloves and eye gear to protect against talons and beaks. Constrain them in a dark container with air holes. Keep the environment as quiet as possible to minimize stress, which can be fatal, particularly for small songbirds.

Now, Davis keeps a stash of old towels and sheets alongside a range of containers, so she’s ready to respond to a call about a bird of any size. She has transported a clutch of duck eggs padded with towels on warm water bottles, and waded across a river to capture a gravely injured heron. She drove almost six hours to pick up a hummingbird with a metabolic problem.

Davis doesn’t often follow up to learn the fate of the birds she transports. The survival rate is about 40 percent. “But if we didn’t do this,” she says, “it would be much lower.”

Birds that fully recover are released back where they were found, and can continue contributing to the local ecosystem, explains Reinhardt. And research suggests that rehabilitation can even boost populations of raptors, which tend to have long life spans and low rates of reproduction.

If you come across a sick or injured bird, you can help rehabilitators and transporters by calling in to report it. If possible, keep the bird contained in a dark place, like a box with holes poked in it. Stress can kill, so make the environment as quiet as possible and resist the urge to peek.

For more information about helping injured animals, or to locate a licensed wildlife rehabilitator near you, check out the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association

How did the frog cross the road?

When temperatures start to rise in early spring, many amphibians begin an annual migration to breeding ponds, often the same ones where they themselves were born. But when their journey involves crossing a road, the pilgrimage can become deadly, even endangering the long-term survival of local populations.

That’s why grassroots efforts have sprung up across the country to help salamanders, newts and frogs safely cross roads. On what are known as “big nights” — when the temperature and rainy weather align to prompt a large number of amphibians to migrate — volunteers armed with safety vests and flashlights congregate at popular crossing spots to ferry the little travelers across the road, out of danger of car tires.

Track the annual migration of spotted salamanders, wood frogs and spring peepers here, and find an amphibian crossing brigade near you.

A crowdsourced record of biodiversity

Any citizen scientist can help track wildlife in their area through a BioBlitz. During these events, usually held over the course of a day, community members and professional scientists work together to catalog living things in a specific area — like a city park, a stretch of coast, or even part of a national park. Participants can record their findings in a platform like iNaturalist.

By working together, citizen and professional scientists have tracked pollinators, rediscovered rare beetles and spotted a locally endangered snake. The events have proven both to provide scientists with valuable data for research and to engage the public with nature in their area.

Find a BioBlitz near you through local parks, universities or museums, or organize your own. Check out guides from iNaturalist, National Geographic and the Pollinator Partnership.

---

BluAZ.com curates positive and solution-focused stories from trusted sources around the world.