Tamarack Wildlife Center

Over the summer of 2021, I spent a lot of my time interning at the Tamarack Wildlife Center in Saegertown, PA. This was an amazing experience, and definitely helped me get some hands-on animal experience. Tamarack Wildlife Center is a wildlife rehabilitation and education center that specializes in rehabilitating and releasing birds of prey, but they’ll also take in adult songbirds, shorebirds and waterfowl, NRV mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. I was so lucky to spend my summer working with hawks, owls, falcons, and my favorite patient who was a turkey vulture named Morty.

Wildlife rehabilitation consists of treating sick, injured, or orphaned animals with the goal of releasing them back into the wild, so during my internship I learned many medical skills that allowed me to see what a future career as a vet might entail. Some of these treatments included administering oral medications and calculating dosages, syringe and tube feeding, giving fluids, administering wing and leg wraps, imping feathers (which is basically replacing a damaged feather with a donor feather), performing eye stains, trimming beaks and talons, performing patient exams, restraining patients, drawing blood, determining keel score, euthanizing animals, and determining when a patient is fit for release. I learned a lot about making tough decisions when it comes to patient care. One thing we often have to consider is whether that animal will be able to survive in the wild, and if not, whether they can live a fulfilling life in captivity. Most of the animals we admit die within the first 24 hours, but for those that survive past that, roughly 75% make it to release at Tamarack. It was really cool to get the opportunity to release these patients throughout the summer in locations throughout Pennsylvania. Of course, we had to do a lot of hard work too like setting up and cleaning aviaries and enclosures, washing dishes, cutting up diets of rat and mice and chick, laundry and sweeping. But honestly getting to see the animals made it all worth it.

As I mentioned earlier, Tamarack is a rehab center and an education center. The second part of my internship involved attending education programs, handling birds on the glove, and providing enrichment to our ambassador birds and other patients. All of the ambassadors at Tamarack are injured wildlife that were deemed non-releasable and the oldest, Lady, was the center’s very first ambassador bird (she’s 30 years old). I loved getting to form connections with the ambassador birds and get to see their unique personalities each day. By first attending education programs to handle the birds and then eventually speaking at these programs, I learned a lot about the natural history of different bird species, common conservation problems especially in reference to Pennsylvania and Ohio wildlife, and the stories of our ambassadors. Tamarack is well known for their treatment of bald eagles and their efforts to reduce lead poisoning in bald eagles, but another significant illness we encountered this summer was the songbird sickness that was spreading around this area that required people to take down their bird feeders. It was neat to see how intertwined wildlife rehab and disease management are and the programs that exist to ensure efforts to protect wildlife are successful, as well as the communication between rehab centers to make sure every patient can receive proper care. We also learned how to make equipment for handling birds and had the opportunity to help train two new ambassador kestrels who were deemed non-releasable due to wing injuries that prevented them from flying.

This experience really solidified my career goal of becoming a wildlife or zoo veterinarian. I want a job that allows me to work closely with animals every day and getting to watch the animals I had worked with get released was so fulfilling. I learned a lot and gained some great experience handling birds while also having a lot of fun and meeting so many cool people!