There was a time when staffers at the Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary cared for baby birds in the spring – feeding them every half hour. Now, says executive director Sarah Cooperman, they and other youngsters are coming in over a much longer period.
“We’re having longer and longer baby seasons. Essentially wildlife are getting cued earlier in the year to start breeding, so I am a little fearful that Virginia will end up sort of similar to Florida, where you have a year-round baby season," she explains. "We have something every year called the squirrel pool where our whole staff and volunteers bet on when the first baby squirrel is going to come in, and when I first started our bets were all for late March. Now our bets are always early February.”
Couple that with an increase in development around the state, and Rockfish expects more than 900 orphaned babies this year.
“Most of the animals that come here have been orphaned because mom was hit by a car, mom was shot, and a lot of tree work and construction," Cooperman says. We have red foxes, eastern gray squirrels, Virginia opossums, raccoons, big brown bats.”
(baby squirrel call)
“That was a baby squirrel. That’s normally the vocalization they do when they’re calling for their mom or calling for food or both.”
The animals are kept on 20 remote acres in Nelson County – most inside a 3,500 square foot building with two nurseries, a special kitchen for preparing critter meals, office and storage space and a laundry room, all paid for through donations. Caring for the babies is a big job that falls to a few paid staffers and 15 volunteers.
“Every patient that we have on site needs fresh food, fresh water, and to be cleaned every single day. For our smallest neonate patients, like a tiny little opossum in our incubator, they might be tube-fed up to eight times per day," Cooperman says. "Our bats are fed overnight – fed every three hours 24/7. All of the personnel at Rockfish are state permitted wildlife rehabilitators, and that gives us permission to work with these animals here – on site. We never take our patients home. It is not legal to have any kind of wildlife pet in Virginia.”
And no wonder. For animals like Rosie – a male vulture – being raised as a pet was a big disservice.
“Imprinting is essentially the stage in a raptor’s development where they look up at their parents, and something in their brain clicks. They go: ‘Oh, I’m one of these things. I’m going to talk like they talk. I’m going to eat what they eat. I’m going to mate with one of these one day and have little baby me-s. When Rosie looked up during that point in his development, he saw a bunch of humans feeding him potato chips in a basement, so Rosie made that connection that he was a human, and that is not reversible.”
It’s also illegal to feed wildlife, and you can only shoot certain wild animals if you have a license from the state. Cooperman says you can’t even trap and remove critters from your property.
“People will sometimes tell us, “I found this box turtle, and I moved it ten miles down the road to the woods behind my house.” That box turtle is going to spend its whole life just trying to navigate back to its little home territory, so relocating reptiles -- it’s really important to remember not only is that illegal but it’s also really dangerous for the animal.”
So if you find a wild animal in need, feel free to call The Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary in Shipman or the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro. They’re happy to help and to bring education ambassadors like Rosie to meet the public and build an understanding of how we can safely live together on the same warming planet.
rockfishwildlifesanctuary.org / 434-263-4954
wildlifecenter.org / 540-942-9453
blueridgewildlifectr.org / 540-837-9000
