Dear Wood Folk,
A blur of a floof was sprinting through my woods one morning, after a scary stormy night!
Mostly yellow and tawny brown.
Black webbed feet.
Black beak.
I’d seen these floofs before because the Canada geese loved to nest beside my parent’s pond.
This one was far from a pond. It’s a couple of minutes drive in any direction for a lake or marsh. And other geese weren’t there. If they had been, he could have been plopped into their flock.
This little wild one was running frantically in the direction of deep woods full of fox and fisher and coyote. So I went on a wild goose chase! I’d love to have a story where we zigged, and we zagged, for hours in good fun, for the show of it. But it took all of two minutes to nab him. He certainly would have been some critters appetizer.
There’s often a low intervention route for many animal rehab situations, and sometimes that route is to not interfere because nothing is actually wrong. Being sure human help is needed is always step #1. Here are the other basics. Keep in mind things you might think are okay, like feeding a starving animal, or giving and injured animal water, could actually be harmful or even deadly – talk to a rehabber first! Even concerning “lost” babies!
Little gosling and his various wildlife rehab waterfowl “siblings” grew up at Woodlands Wildlife Sanctuary and were released back into the wild. Is that you, floofy?
Gosling brought the world of wildlife rehabilitation to my greater attention. Up to that point my engagement had been a couple Facebook likes. This site maintains a list of Ontario based rehabbers, neighbors. There are quite a few, thankfully! All needing support from their communities. I want to urge you fellow nature lovers to find your local rehabbers and give them bookmarks, likes, shares, retweets, donations, volunteering and any other support you can muster! Human activity causes much sickness and injury to nature and these folks are wonderful to heal some of it and give our orphaned, sick or injured wild ones a second chance.
Wood Folk Diaries will be growing up a little too. I’ve shared some of our favorite wildlife encounters, the kind that went on for a while, or turned into a rehab saga. The next WFD will begin the second volume, and will segue into my current craze – birding! I did something this year I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but the price tag turned poor me off. I got a decent camera. A Canon PowerShot SX70 HS Digital Camera* (*affiliate link fyi). It turned me from mostly window birder into a bug suited birding maniac out in the bush for hours to find new feathered friends. We’ll be meeting the Scarlet Tanager in the next Wood Folk Diary! We’ll watch one chug down some black cherries. We’ll see them color morph. It’ll be fun – stay tuned!