An injured egret who wandered into a repair bay at Mike & Paul’s Auto Repair on Route 26 on Aug. 4 was returned to the wild last week, after a few weeks of rest and rehabilitation courtesy of Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research, a non-profit regional facility in Newark, Del.
Coastal Point • M. Patricia Titus
Paul the egret takes flight shortly after being released back into the wild after being treated for a broken wing and parasites.
Nicknamed “Paul” by Mike and Kerry Blizzard, owners of Mike & Paul’s Auto Repair, the snowy-white great egret had sustained a broken wing and was suffering from parasites when he was turned over to bird rescuers and veterinarians about six weeks ago, via volunteer driver Tony Kypreos and Tri-State volunteer Cheryl Zimmerman.
At the time, Zimmerman told the Coastal Point that egrets are very high-stress birds that don’t do well when kept in captivity for any length of time. “They’re very temperamental,” she said, adding that Paul had been kept comfortable and quiet with pain medications after having a pin inserted in his wing and was being treated for the parasites as well.
Paul’s prognosis was grave at the time. “It’s wait-and-see,” Zimmerman had said. “If it doesn’t heal, we’d have to euthanize him. It becomes painful for the bird, and there are few facilities that will take birds that have a permanent injury.”
But, as it turned out, Paul’s surgery and treatment was a success, if not a perfect one.
“His wing’s a little crooked,” Zimmerman said Thursday, Sept. 11, as she took the plastic bin containing the recovered egret from the back of her car in preparation for releasing him on the Assawoman Bay near Route 54. “But he can fly.”
Zimmerman said the release location had been selected due to the number of great egrets that frequent the bay in that area, as opposed to the area around White’s Creek in which he had been found. “He needs to be with others like him,” she said.
Paul’s recuperation had gone from the quiet period after his surgery to spearing fish in a plastic pool and some test flights of the new wing, she said. He’d also been banded so he can be recognized in the future. “And we said, ‘O.K., let’s get him out.’”
But Zimmerman was concerned last Thursday as winds picked up at the release location just before she was ready to set Paul free.
“He hasn’t been able to fly in the wind for a few weeks,” she said nervously. “O.K. — this is the big day.”
With that, Zimmerman set the bin on the ground a few yards from a canal end, popped off the lid and set Paul free.
The egret displayed no reticence about reentering the wild, taking not a moment to run from the bin and just a few steps to get airborne.
“Oh, he’s doing good,” Zimmerman said excitedly as the egret took off into a strong gust and battled back to the east, hovering gracefully in the wind before landing gently in the top of a tree.
He stayed there for a few minutes, getting his bearings as Zimmerman peered up from below, making sure he was still in good shape. He then took off to the west, for the shallow section of bay already inhabited by at least a dozen other great egrets, managing to startle a pair of ospreys along the way.
It was a happy ending for Paul and his rescuers, as with several other birds Zimmerman and other Tri-State volunteers have released in the area in recent weeks. The group is always in need of additional volunteers, she noted.
For more information on volunteering with Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research, call Volunteer Manager Julie Bartley at (302) 737-9543, ext. 102, e-mail her at volunteer@tristatebird.org or visit the group’s Web site at www.tristatebird.org.