The month of August represents a lot of things to people: the waning days of summer, the start of school and so on.
For the staff at International Bird Rescue’s San Francisco Bay Center in Fairfield, August in recent years has come to represent an influx of black-and-white seafaring birds washing up on Northern California beaches and being brought into the center for care.
This summer, more than 200 common murres — which are closely related to puffins but resemble penguins — have been rescued along California’s shores and brought to International Bird Rescue almost every day. Russ Curtis, the center’s technology manager and public relations lead, said the birds have mostly come from the Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay area but others have been discovered farther up the coast toward Ocean Beach in San Francisco and even farther north by Humboldt County.
Curtis said the murres are pelagic, or oceangoing fish, that spend nearly all of their time at sea. They generally only come to land on rocky shores or islands to breed or sit on eggs, which Curtis said makes their immense discovery on beaches so distressing.
“They don’t belong on beaches,” he said. “When you start to hear reports of penguin-looking birds on the beach, that’s a sure sign that there’s some sort of issue out there in the ocean right now.”
This is not the first time that murres have been brought into the Fairfield center, as mass murre events have become more common in the last five years. The first major murre surge for International Bird Rescue was in 2015 when 460 birds were brought in for treatment.
Curtis said the influx of murres at a certain time every year was akin to the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” where a man continually relives a specific day for days on end.
“This has been popping up more and more each summer but especially in August and September where we get lots of these seagoing birds in,” he said.
In fact, one of the murres in International Bird Rescue’s care had also been brought to the center in 2015, as confirmed by its federal banding number. This bird was named Bil Murray in honor of the star of “Groundhog Day.” Curtis said that Mr. Murray is considered a “rebound bird,” due to his return status and released from the center.
Currently, there are 75 birds in care at the Fairfield center. Curtis said the murres often come in emaciated and lethargic with poor feather quality. Staff provides them with fluids and feeds them smelt, which Curtis said staff goes through about 120 pounds of each day. They also have eight pools up and running for the birds, which he said was not typical.
“If we get fluids in them quickly, they usually rebound but they’re tough species in care,” he said.
The good news, Curtis said, is that many of the murres have been released back into the ocean already.
“That’s been tricky because some of the beaches have been closed because of the fires,” he said. “Generally, they’re released back near the San Francisco Golden Gate area if we can.”
International Bird Rescue is calling upon the public to help support the care for the murres. Since the center does not receive federal funding, money can be donated to Bird-rescue.org/get-involved/donate to help defray costs. Curtis also advises anyone who sees black-and-white birds showing up on beaches report them to local wildlife groups.
“A lot of birds came in from Santa Cruz, and we’re so grateful for that area that help us rescue and help and then they transport it up to us in Fairfield,” he said.
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August 29, 2020 at 04:55AM
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Fairfield bird rescue center caring for surge of common murres - Vacaville Reporter
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