BRUNSWICK COUNTY, N.C. — These past couple of months, some interesting things have washed up on the shores of our beaches, including hundreds of tires, rare shells, whales and even arctic birds.
The Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter in Brunswick County is a safe haven for all kinds of injured birds found around the area’s beaches. It’s a passion project that was started by licensed rehabilitator Mary Ellen Rogers 17 years ago.
“I’m not the kind of person who wants to play golf or tennis when I retire,” Rogers said. “This is very gratifying, nobody else is doing it, so I feel like I found a need and filled it.”
That need grows every year, says Rogers, who has been taking in more and more injured birds each year.
“I started out with 150, and last year we had 680, and the year before that we had 790,” Rogers said. “So we’re really climbing up there.”
Rogers believes a lot of that increase is mostly due to humans, specifically from industrial fishing. She says she gets pelicans in almost every day with broken or torn-up wings from boat propellers.
“That bird that’s in there now with the red bandage on her wing, that was a shrimper injury,” Rogers said. “So it’s kind of discouraging for me because when I see those big boats out there at night, I know darn well I’m gonna be getting some banged-up birds in the morning.”
But the climate also plays a role in that increase. Rogers says hundreds of dovekies, arctic birds that resemble penguins, washed up on beaches up and down the East Coast after strong winds from storms blew them south. She says 21 ended up at the Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter.
“They are weak and exhausted and trying to find food so they come a little closer into shore,” Rogers said. “And then we get hit with this storm with a very strong southwest wind and that blew hundreds of them onshore.”
Unfortunately, none of the dovekies in their care made it. Most died within days. Rogers says that although it’s sad to lose the birds she’s trying to save, being able to release the ones she and her team have healed makes it all worth it.
Sea Biscuit Wildlife Shelter says they donated 10 of the dovekie carcasses to the Natural Museum of History in Raleigh.
