December is normally quite a quiet month for our aviary, but this year we’ve seen a variety of different bird species come through the doors.

Our beautiful cockerels fill two of the pens, waiting for someone to rehome them, and a couple of young chickens are in another.

Regular visitors to Ard Jerkyll will know that ’Maggie’ the magpie lives permanently in another pen, and has done for at least 15 years despite his pen door being left open for him to come and go.

A very large white goose, who had been attacked by a dog, stayed with us for a few days; and then we were asked to remove a peacock and two peahens from a garden in St Mark’s. The glamourous ’pea family’ are all looking for a new home, but their new owner will have to appreciate that they can be very noisy and have a habit of sitting, and pooing, on cars! A pheasant was the next to come in from Ballabeg. He had been hit by a car and simply needed some time to regain his equilibrium. Pheasants have a habit of flying low and so risk colliding with cars, but the car driver who hit this bird didn’t stop to check if he was injured. A kind cyclist eventually scooped the bird off the road, and we were able to bring him to Ard Jerkyll.

unfazed

And last, but not least, we brought in a swan who had decided to sit in the middle of the Ballamodha Straight and seemed unfazed by the traffic. One concerned lady described him as looking ’a bit confused’. Luckily he avoided being hit by a car and he doesn’t have any obvious physical injuries. He’s settled into a large pen and is eating well, but he is on the thin side and so we will keep him with us until he has been checked by a vet and is the correct body weight. Then he will be released back into the wild, well away from busy roads.

Larger birds tend to cope well with the stress of being captured and kept in our aviary, but smaller garden birds are more difficult to keep alive. An exciting new project has been launched by several UK charities, including the RSPB, called Garden Wildlife Health. It needs the help of the public to submit reports on sick or dead wildlife and, if possible, to send in samples for analysis, with particular focus on garden birds, amphibians, reptiles and hedgehogs.

Every report submitted will contribute to a national database so that trends can be identified, and every sample will be examined and then archived into one of the largest wildlife tissue banks in the world. Diseases can cause population declines and even species extinctions, and some can impact on public health and wellbeing of domestic animals.

If you would like to register your garden, or similar area, please visit the Garden Wildlife Health’s website - www.gardenwildlifehealth.org. The site also has information on wildlife diseases and best practice advice. Back at Ard Jerkyll, all of our animals have coped well with the recent cold weather. We moved non-roosting the birds inside the aviary at night time, the rabbits came into the main small animals unit building, and we gave the dogs and cats extra bedding as well as making sure the heating was on ’constant’. Apart from a burst pipe and an icy car park, the site has looked magical in the snow.