Turtle Town, Snake City, and a warm place to spend the winter

During the winter the center receives both reptiles and amphibians that end up spending the winter at the center until spring when warmer weather arrives. This winter we received a Common Garter Snake that had a tail injury. It was found on someone’s driveway, probably trying to bask in the sun to stay warm, when they noticed the injury on the tail. One of our volunteer vets took a look at him and decided the dead tissue should be removed with surgery to allow for proper healing to avoid any infections.

Last week Thursday, February 2^nd the Garter Snake had its surgery to remove the infected area of its tail. The surgery was a success! It took under a hour to complete surgery and see healthy tissue under all the infected tissue. Since snakes have such a slow metabolism, a snake its size only eats once or twice a week! The Common Garter Snake already got his post-surgery meal and ate every last worm. We will continue to monitor the snake through the rest of winter as we prepare him for release this spring.

Guest Blogger M.F.

Surgery, after care, and food aren't free; want to help this little guy out? 

Consider making a donation to cover some of his medical costs.

Turtle Town in Winter; New and Improved, part 1

Turtle Town is a pretty busy place this winter! We are currently over-wintering four Snapping Turtles and two Western Painted Turtles. While all wild Wisconsin turtles are hibernating, our patients are enjoying air and water temperatures in the 80’s with daily food service including a menu of fresh Sendik’s salmon, berries and greens. We hope to release all six turtles back to their natural habitats come late spring!

This is our educational ambassador Antoinette. She is a Western Painted Turtle. Here she is showing off her underwater swimming skills!

Guest Blogger C.M.

Our new facility has enabled us to go beyond our old limitations. Stay tuned for more adventures from Turtle Town especially, this winter!

The Only Chimney Swift Spending the Winter in Wisconsin

As many of you know, we are over-wintering a Chimney Swift this year at WINC. He (or she, there’s no real way to tell) came in as an orphan on August 20th. This is considered very late in the season for Chimney Swifts. But just like other baby birds, we fed our little Chimney Swift every 30 minutes for the first couple months to keep him going.

Eventually, as his weight reached a plateau at a healthy 20 grams, we put him on hourly feedings. Typically, as birds grow older they begin to self-feed and you can feed them less and less frequently until they no longer need any hand-feeding. However, Chimney Swifts are different. In the wild, they catch insects in the air as they fly which is very difficult to replicate in captivity. Because they will not self-feed in captivity, we knew we would have to feed him. He was the first patient we cared for in the morning and the last one at night.

Once he developed sufficient flying skills, we decided it was time to start looking for flocks of other Chimney Swifts to release him into. We had heard of flock sightings in Madison so a staff member took him there in hopes that she would find the flock. Unfortunately, it was a cold day so the flock was nowhere to be found. After a few more weeks with no signs of the flock, we had to face the facts: the Chimney Swifts had already migrated to the only place they go in the winter months, Peru! So we knew our 70 degree indoor aviary and hourly hand- feedings were his only hope for survival. Of course we were willing to do whatever we needed to do for him to someday be released.

It’s now the end of January and we’re still feeding our Chimney Swift whenever he desires which is back to almost every half-hour, time permitting. Having to keep any animal over the entire winter is not ideal for us or for them, but one you have to care for so many times a day can start to drive a rehabber a little crazy. It got me thinking about how much of our time this little guy demands. We’ve fed him approximately 15 times per day for the last three months and an average of 25 times per day for the two months prior to that. After a little math, I came up with an approximation of roughly 2,850 feedings since August 20th! So that’s where all of our mealworms are going!

As the days slowly grow longer, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the Chimney Swift and hopefully he will be released into a flock once the summer months return. Until then, he has a safe and warm place to live where he will never have to worry about going hungry.

Guest Blogger, C.M.