VOLUNTEER
Do you love birds? Do you have a passion for keeping wild things wild? Do you enjoy nature and the outdoors? Do you believe, as we do, that birds are our best-known connection to a natural world that is fast disappearing? Would you like to play a vital role in nurturing the sick, caring for the orphaned, and rehabilitating those injured? Do you enjoy spreading knowledge of birds to the future stewards of our planet?
If you answered YES to one or more of these questions, volunteering at The Bird Rescue Center may be for you!
Volunteers are the heart and soul of The Bird Rescue Center. They take on a myriad of tasks to support both our Rehabilitation Hospital and our Education Program.
Volunteers in our hospital participate in the care and feeding of our patients. They also support in other ways—from answering phones, transporting birds between facilities, performing field rescues, facility maintenance and more. Our Education Program includes opportunities to participate in the care and handling of all our Education Ambassador Birds and our various education events. You can choose to participate by working directly with our Ambassadors, or by participating in education presentations and events.
No matter which volunteer opportunities appeal to you personally, each and every volunteer makes a significant contribution to the life-saving work that takes place each and every day!
There are many ways to support the Center. If you are not able to commit the time required for Rehab work, please consider joining our Feld Rescue Team, Off-Site Support or other area.
And simply becoming a BRC member helps cover the expenses incurred in caring for our native wild birds.
BRC currently cares for 13 resident Ambassador birds - each bird has an injury or condition that prevents release back to the wild. They are primarily raptors (owls, hawks, falcons, Osprey, Turkey Vultures), with one un-Common Raven mixed into the group.
We are licensed by Federal and State of California Departments of Fish & Wildlife to work with all our birds.
Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, our work has continued uninterrupted although we have been forced to hire some additional staff to make up for the usual army of volunteers who have been unable to offer their normal hours of assistance. In early 2021, we also faced an avian pandemic from a highly contagious Salmonellosis bacteria which infected first Pine Siskins and then other Finch varieties and nearly tripled the number of birds we admitted during the first quarter of the year. Despite these additional challenges, we continue to maintain an impressive annual success rate of over 80% and treat approximately 3,000 birds each and every year—that’s a lot of birds returning to the wild!
Our rehabilitation services are provided free of charge, and we receive no tax revenue or government subsidies. Our support comes from the generosity of those who have been helped by our services, from private individuals and corporations, and from competitive grants . Our work is typically conducted by over 120 trained volunteers who work under the supervision of a small professional staff and are assisted by licensed veterinarians. Volunteers normally provide over 20,000 hours free labor annually!