Hail damage repairs keep auto shops busy from Portland to Corpus Christi<\/a><\/p>\nLeaders at the Amos Rehabilitation Keep (ARK) say this is the first time they\u2019ve seen a mass event of this scale affecting local bird populations. The number of injured birds taken in has now risen from 150 to 350, prompting wildlife organizations from across the region to rally in support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, cold stunning events with sea turtles,” said Andrew Orgill with the ARK. “But definitely never with a mass stranding of brown pelicans that we’ve ever experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Orgill, the hailstorm, with baseball-sized hail reported in some areas, may have injured or killed an estimated 2,000 birds along the Gulf Coast. Many of the affected birds were brown pelicans nesting on Shamrock Island Preserve, a key rookery in Corpus Christi Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cShamrock Island Preserve is basically our pelican breeding island, our main rookery island in Corpus Christi Bay,\u201d Orgill said. \u201cSo that whole island getting completely covered by that hailstorm was definitely… It was a tragedy for the birds that were on it. We’re just hoping that we can at least save enough of them to try to save that population.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown pelicans were once listed as an endangered species, making this event a major setback for their ongoing recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
At the forefront of the rescue operation is Dr. Shayna Whitaker, who has been examining each injured bird one by one.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see the bruising all up here and even some bleeding and lacerations,\u201d Dr. Whitaker said. \u201cWe’ve also had a lot of eye injuries, where the hail probably hit them on the head or in the eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Whitaker explained that birds\u2019 lightweight bone structures make them especially vulnerable to strong impacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust palpating down every bone to see if we feel any fractures, if they\u2019re big and obvious, we can make decisions,\u201d she said. \u201cOtherwise, we do have an X-ray machine and they’ll get X-rays taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some of the injured birds are showing signs of recovery, many others have not survived.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaking care of each one individually has definitely not been easy,\u201d Orgill said. \u201cIt was a devastating loss to the colony. The birds that we’ve had come in, a lot of them unfortunately have been really badly injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the ARK team remains hopeful as they continue their work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not able to be rehabilitated unfortunately, so at least they’re here, we’re able to end their suffering and give them some peace at the end,\u201d Orgill said. \u201cBut thankfully, there’s also a large portion of them that we think will do okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you’d like to help, visit ARK’s website<\/a> to get involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of injured birds taken in at the ARK has now risen from 150 to 350, prompting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-40369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}