During our busy season we are getting calls all day long about birds in need, and our rehabilitators are busy hand-rearing babies that can not be left alone. Time is of the essence with orphaned birds, and if you can collect a bird and drive them to one of our rehabilitators in Peel or Castletown, you could be saving a life.
When people find a bird that needs help, we ask them to catch it and put it in a box. You will just need to pick the box up and hand it over to us (or take it straight to the closest vet if necessary). You don’t need to know anything about birds - some of our volunteers are actually scared of birds! They just collect birds that are already boxed and don’t even need to look at the bird.
When we get a call about a bird, we put a request out on our Facebook messenger group or WhatsApp group asking if anyone is free to collect and deliver them. If you can do it, you reply. If not, you ignore the message. It’s as simple as that! When you aren’t free you can mute notifications from the group for as long as you like so they don’t annoy you. If you aren’t tech-savvy you can let us know what days or hours you might be available to do a transport run, and give us a phone number to reach you on if we need you.
If you fancy more of a hands-on challenge you can also volunteer to rescue birds when necessary. For example, we often get calls about injured birds that can not fly who need to be caught. If you want to rescue birds, we can give you a net and everything else you need and train you how how handle birds safely.
If you would like to be a transport volunteer, or want to learn more, please Get in Touch!