| Home | Wish List | Volunteers | Who We Are | Stories | Patients | Injuries | Baby Birds |
Place your cursor over photo to pause slide show.
Schooner is an adult Roseate Tern which is a threatened species, was found in June 2008 with a fractured wing, a block from an established roof-top nesting colony in Marathon, Fl. Due to the close proximity of this roof-top colony, we believe she was nesting there with other Terns.
What makes Schooner unique is that we know when and where she was born. As a part of a bird banding project, Schooner was banded in the summer of 2002 on the beach at Pelican Shoals, a small cluster of islands halfway between Marathon and Key West.
Ricardo Zambrano, a biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, is a permitted bander who tagged Schooner over six years ago. Normally people report bird bands by calling the 800 phone number engraved on the band. However, since the Marathon Wild Bird Center occasionally assists Ricardo with banding birds we called him directly. Ricardo was excited to learn about Schooner because she was the first band return he'd ever received.
Schooner was rescued by Dana and his 2 children, all volunteers for the Marathon Wild Bird Center. Otherwise in healthy condition, Schooner cannot be released due to the severity of her fractured (radius/ulna) left wing which we believe is the result of a collision with a car. Schooner would drag the primary feathers of her fractured wing because of the lack of muscle tone. Hence, we trim these primary feathers so she won't trip and fall over them.
We do not, at this time, have an adequate small seabird habitat and feared she wouldn't do well at our Center. We posted on the Florida Wildlife Rehabilitator Association's forum that we were seeking a captive Roseate Tern colony to add her into it. One fellow rehabber informed her friend who posted it on the American Zoological Association forum for bird keepers. We received two inquires, one from the South Carolina Aquarium and one from the New England Aquarium. Due to the ability to find a local pilot here in the Keys who will personally fly her to Charlotte, SC., we chose the South Carolina Aquarium to be her new home.