Volunteering for the birds

Feeding the shorebirds

It's 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, but temperatures are already rising into the humid upper 80s as my friend and I are arrive at the local seabird sanctuary. We know we're in for a long day -- it's our first day of what will be a 40 hour volunteer project over the semester for our senior class. I couldn't be more excited though. The seabird sanctuary is the largest wild bird hospital in the country, admitting around 8,000 birds each year.

Although we won't be working directly with the hospital,  we do get to work closely with the rehabilitated birds in the public area of the facility. As soon as we arrive, a staff member puts us to work with scrub brushes, soap, bleach, and rakes, assigning us several enclosures. I get to take care of the owls first -- 4 screech owls, a barn owl, two barred owls, and a great-horned. 

It's a little different than the work I did over the summer; these birds for the most part are not trained to work with humans, so they are a lot more nervous each time I get near them. Nonetheless, they remain fairly calm and only eye me disdainfully as I scrape droppings off of perches, drain pools, and rake the soft beach sand at the bottom of the enclosures.

Once I finish, I help my friend clean an enclosure housing some crows, followed by a kestrel, and then some blue jays. The jays are a lot more feisty than the others, and one even lands on my head for a moment when I first walk in to hose off its food dish! We also work together to clean a large enclosure housing a group of vultures and peregrine falcons.

Cleaning duties are finished around 10:30am and we move on to food prep. Most of this work takes place in one wing of the hospital building, a workshop-like room with a large tank full of dead fish, as well as sinks, counter space, refrigerators, storage areas, etc. Even without air conditioning, it's still the coolest place at the facility, aired out by a giant fan in the corner wafting away some of the harsher odors.

My friend and I are put to work sorting fish by size, and soon find ourselves up to our elbows in the red-tinted water of the big tank, trying not to get jabbed by spines and barbs. It's an oddly satisfying task however, and contrary to what you might think, it wasn't really as "gross" as you would expect!

After a lunch break, we return to work to fillet the fish we sorted, cut them into small strips, and divvy out diets for each of the bird enclosures. The staff members show us what each bird eats and where to place the dishes in the enclosures, but I know I'll never remember it all! Next we find ourselves cutting up more fish in big chunks (yum!), and then hauling the remaining fish out of the tank and dividing them into buckets that will go out to the pelicans and gulls.

By the end of the day I smell positively delightful and am covered in a delicious smattering of fish guts, sand, and bird poop. It was totally exhausting, and certainly not the most glamorous job, but after talking to many of the staff members and volunteers I could really see why it was important that we were there. The sanctuary runs as a nonprofit, so all their money comes straight from donations, meaning they have very little to go around. Most of the dirty work is done totally by unpaid volunteers. It's incredible that the facility remains one of the largest in the country, considering how few people are doing so much work.

So this will be my every weekend for the next couple months. Eight hours down, 32 more to go. It's rough work, but I'm happy to be doing it; I've already learned a lot more about birds and can't wait to become more familiar with the place and the people there. 

Final Days in Puerto Rico

Finally finished with school for the semester and wanted to post a few more pictures from my final days in Puerto Rico last month (wow, was it already that long ago?). Didn't see any new birds really in the final 2 days, but I did become very accustomed to the regulars -- scaly-naped pigeons, stripe-headed tanagers, tons of hummingbirds, wrens, and yellow-shouldered blackbirds.

After finishing work on our second-to-last day, we spent the afternoon hiking in the waterfalls. These falls were about a 15 minute trek from the Hacienda into the jungle, and were comprised of a narrow, rocky stream that ran down from the mountain top. I also found out on our last day that this was the source of water we had been drinking for the last week! No filtration or processing, just pure mountain water piped straight to the house. It tasted delicious, and no one got sick from it so I guess it was clean enough!

Climbing down (I'm in the purple hat)

We literally followed the stream for hours, climbing up waterfall after waterfall after waterfall. It was seemingly endless. Some were small and needed only a short step up, and others were taller than I am and required some intense finessing to get up. Coming down again was a whole other ordeal!

On our last day, we packed up again and headed off in the sketchy red van, with more people than there were seats bouncing around as we hurtled down the mountain. It was another gorgeous day, and I couldn't help but feel reflective and somewhat melancholy as we left the pristine jungles for the coastal city.

As if a testament to the urban growth slowly taking over the island, we passed this gigantic overpass that cuts straight through the rainforest from Ponce on the coast to Utuado inland. For a rainforest that  had made me feel so small, insignificant, and very much at the mercy of nature all week long, this bridge turned the tables completely, dwarfing the mountains and throwing nature at the mercy of humankind.

Cool sand sculpture

Once we got into Ponce, we had the whole afternoon and half the night to enjoy the city before heading to the airport at midnight (hooray for budget flights!). We wandered the central street market, browsed the shops, and had dinner at a fancy restaurant for our last meal together.

The city contrasted sharply to the jungles that surround it. Although it's fairly old and retains the classic Latin American style of architecture and layout, it's a very different world from the lives led by those who live in the mountains. 

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Like all travel, it was immensely eye-opening to the ways other people live, and a fantastic opportunity to visit one of the few biodiversity hotspots left in the world today. I hope to return to the Caribbean islands and Latin America someday soon and see what else there to see!

Service Learning in Puerto Rico: Part 3

While the first couple days of our trip were pretty laid back, the real work began on Monday when our site host arrived to put us to work. As all of our days would begin from then on, we rose with the sunrise and hiked up the steep mountain trail. Before we began that day, our host showed us some of the other trails and told us about the preserve and the work we would be doing. He showed us the plantains and coffee groves, and the sacred trees of the forest. Unfortunately I forgot most of the names of the plants he showed us, as they were mostly in Spanish.

Most sacred tree in the forest

One of the most interesting plants were the sacred trees in the old growth forest near the top of the mountains. They had a thick, gooey sap that smelled like Vicks vapor rub, and were used medicinally for the same purposes (to help with colds and to clear sinuses). You could see healed-over scratches in the tree’s bark where people had harvested some of the sap. After showing us all this, he had us all stop for a moment and pray to it; he felt a great affinity and spiritual connection to this part of the forest.

View from the mountain

We hiked back partway down the mountain and split off into different work groups. Some students stayed on the mountain to help the site host’s worker dig drainage trenches on the trail while the rest of us went down to clean out the guest houses on the plantation.

Giant cane toad (and Nana the white fluffy dog)

It wasn’t at all glamorous work. Unfortunately, the site had fallen into some state of disrepair over the past few months, largely due to lack of upkeep and probably not enough people to help, so the task before as was tremendous. We had to scrub the walls and stairs free of mildew (thanks to that warm, moist rainforest climate!), haul away rusted farm equipment and car parts, and generally organize the plantation complex.

There was also a small organic garden next to the main house that we recovered, clearing away weeds and harvesting ripe vegetables. We found peppers, tomatoes, and even ginger root flourishing in the overgrown weeds.

Awesome caterpillar 

Once we got to the inside of the main guest house, it got even worse — The kitchen and library rooms needed to be organized, gutted, scrubbed, dusted, and otherwise scoured from top to bottom. It took us the majority of the week to get it all done, but the end result was quite an improvement.

Even though the work was exhausting, messy, and not always fun, that was exactly the reason we needed to be there volunteering. The fact that we were able to help out, even in a small way made the trip that much more fulfilling.

Puerto Rican Stripe-headed Tanager

So that was how we spent most of our week: up to our elbows in dirt or dust or any number of other unpleasant things, but having a great time doing it (for the most part!).

The last couple days of our trip would be a little more exciting… so stay tuned!