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60 °F Forecast | Road Cams Saturday, March 6, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend February 12, 2004 Wildlife Response Team helps little critters By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune After the sharp-shinned hawk crashed into Shelly McMillin’s living-room window on Super Bowl Sunday with an enormous thud, the little bird of prey appeared like it didn’t have a prayer. "He was on his back with his wings out and his talons open, gasping," McMillin says. "He looked like a goner." But nine days later, the robin-sized hawk sat poised in McMillin’s grip, training its deep green eyes toward freedom amid the scrub oaks and thickets on McMillin’s 15-acre ranch near Ruch. "This," she says, "is going to feel good for him." Standing nearby, Ralph Quincy felt better than good. Even after thousands of successful releases of wounded wildlife over the past decade, the leader of the Rogue Valley’s all-volunteer Wildlife Response Team never tires of helping rescue animals that aren’t big enough or rare enough to otherwise receive a helping hand. Advertisement The team is the clearinghouse for solving little-critter crises by collecting wounded wildlife from landowners throughout Jackson and Josephine counties and shipping them instantly to the Wildlife Images rehab center in Merlin for help. When elk or deer are hurt, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists go to the rescue. But when it’s small hawks or owls, raccoons or muskrats, Quincy’s dozen fills the void. "They do all the small stuff that there’s no way we can get to," says Rosemarie Stussy, an ODFW biologist who fields wildlife injury and damage calls at the agency’s Central Point office. "Hundreds and hundreds of animals have gone to Wildlife Images because of them." McMillin’s hawk certainly fit the bill. Divebombing a robin that it grasped in its talons, the hawk knocked itself silly when it smacked into McMillin’s window and careened into the nearby grass. Hoping the bird could right itself on its own, she waited and watched. Fifteen minutes, McMillin told herself, before she would intervene. First, his eyes fluttered. At 15 minutes, it stood up, then remained motionless. Five minutes later, it could only muster a few rolls of the neck . "Then he flew about 15 feet and crashed," McMillin says. "Two more hops and you could tell he wasn’t going to make it." She rushed out, tossed a towel over the bird and brought it inside. Familiar with Wildlife Images, she dialed the rehab center. They gave her the Wildlife Response Team’s pager number, so she beeped volunteers Ingrid Edstrom and Jeff Behrends. "I had the response team on the phone in five minutes, and they agreed to meet me in Jacksonville in 20 minutes," McMillin says. "It was the most amazingly well-orchestrated exchange," she says. Edstrom and Behrends then handed the bird off to Quincy, who ran the final leg of the hawk relay to Wildlife Images, where the bird received instant treatment. "It went from helpless to hopeful in a single phone call," McMillin says. The response team has handled 300-500 such calls annually since Quincy formed the team 10 years ago. About 80 percent of the calls turn into success stories with successful releases, he says. A licensed rehabilitator, Quincy can treat wounded critters in the field. The rest go to Wildlife Images where teams of seasoned rehabbers have the equipment and experience to cure tricky injuries. Sometimes, team members can care a bit too much by helping exotic animals not normally wanted here, Stussy says. "They go so extreme that they’ve tried to rehab starlings," Stussy says. "We had to come down on them — no starlings, no possums." At Wildlife Images, the diagnosis came down on the sharp-shinned hawk: flesh wounds on its right wing and a concussion. High-strung and nervous, the hawk needed little more than food and safe confines while it shook out the cobwebs. "It just needed R&R and a quiet place to recover," Wildlife Images Director David Siddon says. Quincy realizes that saving this sharp-shinned hawk registered nary a blip in the hawk world. He can’t save the wild world one bird at a time. But he can create connections between people and wildlife, and that’s an offering more powerful than any single bird. "The great thing is, this gives people a chance to get involved in helping animals and the environment," Quincy says. "It has an impact on the public, and that’s the most important thing of all." But McMillin thought about nothing more than the hawk gripped in her gloved hands. She counted to three and opened her palms. Notions of a soaring and screetching bird of wonder gave way to the vision of a fluttering, sputtering bird trying desperately to get its feathers under it after nine days of rest. After a hard landing at the brush line, the hawk made it to safety. "The release," Quincy says, "is usually anti-climactic." McMillin, however, was estatic. "That was really, really cool," she says. "It’ll be great to see him again." 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