5 days ago
Woman stumped by ‘sad' discovery in gutter of suburban home
An experienced rescuer was faced with a riddle after she rushed to a large suburban home this week to help a young kookaburra stuck high up on the roof. After examining the bird's body, she could see 'no visible injuries', but looking at the house, she quickly formed a theory about what led to its sad demise.
It involves a window, a tiled roof, and a gutter.
Veteran WIRES rescuer Inga Tiere told Yahoo News Australia it had been a community effort to get the bird down, with fire crews rushing to the scene to help. Homes in the southwest Sydney suburb of Moorebank are built close together, so the firefighters were unable to angle their large ladder between them. Instead, they steadied a smaller ladder that Inga climbed while holding her trusty net.
The bird was somehow caught on the guttering, but even when perched up a ladder, it was too high to examine exactly why it couldn't move. 'The wing may have been caught between the gutter and the overhanging tiles. When I pushed him forward, he fell straight into the net,' Inga said.
Clue to kookaburra's demise uncovered
After a quick physical examination, she took the kookaburra to a nearby animal hospital for assessment. That's where the first clue about its demise was uncovered.
Nothing showed up on X-rays, but it quickly became clear that the bird's air sacs had burst, and this is often associated with a hard fall.
Inga suspects that the bird likely flew into the high windows of a neighbouring house, then tried to fly away.
Windows can kill even the most experienced birds, but the juvenile kookaburra she rescued was still trying to navigate the urbanised world he was born into. And reflections of branches or the sky on windows can fool them and lead to collisions, which leave them stunned and temporarily paralysed.
'When they hit the window, fight or flight kicks in. They fly away, land, and then can't go anywhere,' Inga said.
The problem of window collisions can easily be solved by putting stickers on windows, so the birds can see them. UV-coloured options, which are nearly invisible to the human eye are the best option, and they are widely used on high rises in cities like Chicago and New York City. The Apple store in Adelaide also recently applied them to its windows in Adelaide after dozens of native birds flew into its storefront.
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Sydney lucky to still have kookaburras
Helping wildlife survive suburban environments can make a huge difference. Sydney is lucky to still have kookaburras — the species needs tree hollows to raise their young, and there are still a few around. Over in Melbourne, the overwhelming loss of native trees has resulted in localised extinctions across the majority of that city.
Sadly, despite receiving expert care, the juvenile kookaburra did not survive. After crashing into the window, Inga believes it plummeted onto the hard tile roof, and then became caught in the guttering.
'The kookaburra wouldn't have died from the burst air sacs, but he could have been hanging up there for days,' Inga said.
Despite the bird's exhaustion, Inga had been hopeful it would pull through, but sadly, it died while in care. Despite frequently being exposed to animal trauma and death through her volunteering, the loss of this little bird has affected her.
'It's very sad. It did get to me. I didn't expect him to die,' she said.
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