Read the full article by Maddie Burakoff (Audubon)
“South Pelican Island belongs to the birds. Royal Terns circle and screech above this spit of sand and shrub, which juts out of North Carolina’s winding Cape Fear River. Grackles hop among the bushes as sandpipers dart along the water. And as the name of the island suggests, Brown Pelicans abound.
On a gleaming August morning, people have ventured into this avian realm to set up a temporary health clinic along the shore. Two volunteers perched on overturned buckets try to steady their current patient, a young Brown Pelican stretched across their laps. The bird ruffles its downy feathers and lets out dinosaur-like squawks as Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina, examines its leg.
She gently inserts a needle to draw deep red blood, while volunteer Marylou Moeller offers comfort. ‘Good job, buddy,’ Moeller says. ‘Easy, easy, easy.’ The vial goes into a cooler as the team—which works under a federal bird banding permit—secures a silver band around the bird’s leg, plucks several feathers, and swirls a swab down its yawning throat pouch and another around its cloaca.” …