For the Birds

Mr. Robin didn't seem much like an avian hero as he peered through the mesh of his large travel cage, brighteyed under the curious gaze of several visitors picnicking beside Eagle River. American robins are such a common sight that a wild one bopping around the nearby parking lot attracted no attention at all.

But Jo Walch knows Mr. Robin's true character. Eight years ago, he arrived at The Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage with an injured wing that was later amputated. "I call him my robin, but he's not my bird. He lives with me," said Walch, a long-time volunteer. Mr. Robin does more than meet-and-greets; he also helps Walch save baby robins by popping mealworms into their mouths and teaching them to feed themselves when he decides they're ready. Over the years he has raised countless orphans.

"That's why I think he's wonderful," Walch said. That, and his private serenades.

Mr. Robin is one of the lucky ones. Every year the nonprofit center treats more than a thousand wild birds found ailing, injured or orphaned all over Alaska. The litany of dangers includes tumbling from nests, colliding with windows, falling victim to house pets and predators and being struck by cars. Birds are shot, trapped, poisoned, electrocuted, sickened by garbage from dumps, caught in razor wire. They lose wings, legs and eyes, damage beaks and talons, snap fragile bones, fall ill with various ailments.

"We like to say wild birds don't carry health insurance," says board vice president Mary Bethe Wright. A platoon of TLC volunteers tries to compensate for that by repairing, rehabilitating and releasing more than half of the birds they treat.

Most people will never know how much work-everything from filing to surgery-occurs behind the scenes, because the center's modest facility is too small to allow tours without stressing the birds. The organization plans to change that some day by building a public facility on its land near Potter Marsh Wildlife Refuge.

On the day I visited, the staff quietly fed and medicated birds housed in an assortment of cages, kennels, pens, mews and tubs. Beside the freezer marked "quail" was one labeled "rodents"...