Aqua asked about doing more of the nice side of things. I do, I get way more than my share of them. I'm lucky in that the boss trusts me with doing a lot of the catching, and a lot of releasing as well. Actually, in all honesty, it's not so much skill - it's more that because I contract from home most of the time for the paying job, I'm available and I don't mind going places. And I'm not too scared of being bitten, which is a huge advantage.
I stopped doing shifts at the centre every day because I'd come home just about every day and cry about losing birds or animals. A lot of the catching does involve injured or trapped animals, and very often I need to make the call on whether they go straight to the nearest vet for euthanasing. And of course, the babies I treat at home are entirely my responsibility. Some of them will go through to the centre as soon as I can get them there, but most are feral pigeons and mynahs, and the centre doesn't treat them because they aren't indigenous. And crap as I might be sometimes, at least I'm giving them some chance.
Boss lady says that we don't know either how many of the littlest ones would make it with their parents, that in the wild a percentage would die anyway. Also, the ones that we get have often been traumatised in some way already - by falling out of the nest, being caught by cats or dogs, being cold and hungry etc.
But it's still heartbreaking to lose them, especially when it's a babe that you've been feeding two drops to every half hour for a few days. Don't think I'll ever get used to that...just that some days it hurts a bit, and some days it feels like a bit of me dying too....
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