TRES CANTOS, Spain (Reuters) – A wildlife recovery centre in central Spain is sparing no effort to nurse the many bird offspring afflicted by the blistering summer heat back to health so they can be re-released into the wild.
Heat waves have become more frequent in Spain in recent years, part of a global pattern of rising temperatures widely attributed by scientists to human activity.
Young common swifts, black redstarts, common kestrels and imperial eagles are habitual patients at Madrid’s regional Centre for the Recovery of Wild Animals (CRAS) during summertime, as they’re particularly vulnerable to the scorching temperatures that can top 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
“Swifts are the ‘stars’ of the summer because they’re the ones that come in the most,” CRAS director and veterinary chief, Silvia Villaverde, told Reuters, adding they had exceeded the 1,400-swifts mark so far this year.
Their chicks are complex to care for, as they require constant individual feeding with a diet made up exclusively of insects, which places a large burden in terms of time, resources and staff on the centre, she said.
They are often brought in by hikers who find them lying on the ground after they’ve either jumped out of their nests or been pushed out by their siblings due to the harrowing heat.
CRAS also receives many kestrels that have just fledged but are still incapable of securing food on their own or have crash-landed in places inaccessible to their parents, said forestry engineer Alejandro Martinez.
“After a day or two without food, with these high temperatures, they dehydrate very easily,” he added.
To reintroduce the assorted birds back into the wild, CRAS uses a “fostering” technique in which the chicks are placed in other nests and adopted by new parents who teach them proper behaviour, including how to fly or hunt.
(Reporting by Guillermo Martinez and Silvio Castellanos; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Aurora Ellis)
