Five months ago, the skies above Riverside Elementary in Ringle brought destruction — tearing apart homes, uprooting trees and damaging the school as an EF3 tornado ravaged the area. But on Sept. 25, the skies offered something else entirely: the comforting warmth of autumn sun for the kids gathered outside the renovated school, and the long-awaited and hard-fought return home for three wild birds injured in the April 17 tornado.
On that afternoon, an American kestrel, a red-tailed hawk and a merlin were released at the Riverside playground after a five-month rehabilitation stint with Raptor Education Group Inc (REGI). As the rehabilitated raptors took flight over the newly repaired school, the cheering students witnessed a powerful symbol of their own community’s resilience.
“The tornado changed a lot of things around us,” Principal Kevin Kampmann told students gathered outside Riverside Elementary on Sept. 25. “We had houses and our school, and even some of the natural habitat that our animals live in, destroyed. But today, we see lots of signs of healing. Our school is fixed, which is great. We see houses all around us that are getting repaired and getting rebuilt, and today, we have some animals that have been injured that get the opportunity to go back into the wild.”
Founded by Marge and Don Gibson in 1990, REGI is based in Antigo but serves birds and learners across Central Wisconsin, offering both educational programs and wildlife rehabilitation.
“The need [in 1990] was really great, especially for bald eagles that had just started to recover in their numbers, and trumpeter swans that had just started being reintroduced at that time,” Gibson said.
Today, the outfit serves about 100 eagles and 1,000 other birds every year, in addition to countless education events.
With a well-earned reputation in the community, REGI was the first place Ringle residents turned after discovering birds injured by the April 17 tornado. Many of the injured birds were juveniles that were still nest-bound at the time of the storm.
“Spring is when birds breed, so their nests, their homes, are in trees and that’s where they have their babies,” Gibson said. “They’re not terribly sturdy ... so when those trees came down, the babies that were inside were injured and fell to the ground.”
REGI started fielding calls shortly after the storm cleared and people ventured outside to clean up and retrieve debris.
“One of the birds that’s still here was found by a group of children that had been searching around for things that came out of houses. They found a broad-winged hawk under some rubble,” Gibson said.
Despite the toll on the community and the outpouring of support for families affected, people still had room in their hearts to look out for injured wildlife.
“After a tornado of that magnitude, everyone was worried about human tragedy, but people were taking time to pick [birds] up and help them, which I thought was pretty wonderful,” Gibson said. “We got many birds, probably 15 or 20 at one time.”
Of those injured birds, most survived and have been rehabilitated. Several were already released into the wild earlier this year, and a few remain but will be released before winter.
The birds released last week were separate species and all had different injuries and rehabilitation stories.
The first bird released in front of the students was a juvenile American kestrel that was nesting in a tree cavity when it fell. The bird’s presence was known to a nearby family, who went out searching for the birds shortly after the storm.
“That was special to me. Here their home has been destroyed, and yet they’re thinking, ‘What positive thing can come from this destruction?’ And they found one baby alive and brought it in,” Gibson said. “When your home’s been devastated and destroyed, for a person to find baby birds and get them help, that speaks a lot of the individual. And we saw that several times.”
Kestrels are the smallest and most common falcons in North America, weighing only about 4 ounces, or the same as a stick of butter. They’re about the size of a blue jay. This kestrel suffered internal bleeding from the fall. She was a baby and was raised at REGI by kestrel foster parents.
The little kestrel was so young that she had never flown in the wild before her release last week.
“She flew (inside) so she knew what to do, but this was the first time she had blue sky at her back — and she was pretty excited about that!” Gibson said.
The second bird released was a merlin, a very fast falcon that’s a bit bigger than kestrels. Merlins cruise at about 30 mph and can reach 50 to 70 mph during chases. Unlike the other two birds, the merlin was an adult whose nest fell during the storm.
The final bird was a red-tailed hawk. Much larger than the previous two birds, mature red-tailed hawks weigh 1.5 to 3.5 pounds. This hawk was also a juvenile, about one year old. Gibson suspects he was struck by a piece of debris in the chest, suffering a broken clavicle bone.
“With a clavicle injury, regaining upward flight is the concern. He was here for about five months, but he recovered well and flew right up into those trees!” Gibson said. “They live a long time, so he has a full life ahead of him now, whereas that could have been cut short.”
Since the clavicle is so instrumental to a bird’s flight, Gibson was worried the hawk wouldn’t fully recover.
“That’s the bone that actually allows the wing to get altitude, to go up. And without that, it might fly straight and level, but it would not ever be releasable,” she said.
REGI has several large “flight” buildings with different ceiling heights — think indoor playgrounds where birds are allowed to practice their flying. In each room there are perches and the birds graduate to higher-ceiling rooms as they achieve upward flight and reach the high perches. The hawk, with an injured clavicle, initially struggled to reach the perches.
“He had trouble, and honestly I wasn’t sure that he was going to make it. But I will tell you, after a couple of months, he really wanted to go, and he worked hard at it,” Gibson said. “He was conditioning all the time, exercising all the time. He was determined, and by golly, he absolutely did it.”
Communication, a key part of any rehabilitation, is limited when working with wildlife. Humans find it hard enough to rehabilitate from injuries with a dedicated staff telling them exactly what to do and why it’s so important. With birds, rehabilitators need to rely on the animal’s instincts.
Thankfully, the young hawk, who had never flown before the storm, was in good company. REGI had other red-tailed hawks at the flight center who he could observe and train alongside.
“They’re really intelligent. I think the youngsters, they’re like any family, they want to outdo each other, they want to succeed,” Gibson said. “Succeeding for a raptor is really important, because that’s life. If they’re not successful, they’re not going to survive in the wild. So they have that strong survival instinct.”
Eventually, fueled by seeing his fellow hawks succeed earlier, the hawk defied Gibson’s initial skepticism and made his way to the highest perch at REGI.
“I remember the first day when he flew up — and he was surprised! Because all the other birds around him were flying, and he kept trying to get to the highest perches, and he would fail,” Gibson said. “He would fail and fail, but he kept trying. He made one more attempt, a real determined attempt, and he got to the high perch, and he looked down at me like, ‘Huh! See? I am determined, I am going to be wild again, this is the plan. I was meant to be wild, and so I’m going to be.’ He was delighted with himself!”
Five months of hard work and determination ultimately led to the young hawk’s freedom. He took off outside Riverside Elementary, buoyed by the roar of young school kids cheering him on, after a long personal trial.
“I was really happy with his determination — and it was his determination! We did our part, but he was determined!” Gibson said. “He was, by golly, gonna go and live life. I’m sure that the second that he left my hand, he was like, ‘This is what it’s all about! See ya!’”
The birds were released once they demonstrated their flying and mouse hunting abilities at REGI while also meeting crucial weight and feather standards.
Gibson outlined what the birds are likely to experience in the first few days of their newfound freedom. After nesting in trees overnight, they’ll start their first day in the wild with a hunt. The red-tailed hawk will look for rodents: mice, rats, chipmunks, squirrels. He is a young male and will not worry about breeding for some years to come.
“He’s got a couple of years to be a kid, and to just enjoy life around him and start to look for a place,” Gibson said. “He’s going to go south for the winter, not very far, but south. When he comes back, he will always come back to the same general area, and then he’ll find a mate, he’ll find a place that will be his home. He’s got a couple of years to sort that all out. Right now he’s kind of a teenager.”
The female kestrel will stick around. She likes to sit on top of poles and search for mice and big insects, like grasshoppers. With outstanding monocular and binocular vision, a kestrel can see a mouse 100 yards away as well as she can see a person right in front of her, so she’ll have no difficulty finding breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The merlin is a very fast and fierce falcon. In addition to eating small rodents and large insects, they commonly prey on small birds, catching them in flight. Unlike the other birds released last week, the merlin didn’t head right to the trees; he soared in the skies above for several minutes, basking in the feeling of flight once again.
Gibson was excited to share this special moment with the kids of Riverside Elementary, who temporarily lost their “home” at the school this spring for repairs.
“I didn’t realize just how symbolic it was,” she said.
Just this past weekend, Gibson met a student from Riverside who came to visit REGI with her family. They lost their home in the tornado.
“The little girl said, ‘The birds lost their homes, too, but now they’re wild, and they’re better, and they’re happy, just like us,’” she said. “And you know, I started to see the parallels that were more than I had anticipated.”
Gibson had the honor of holding the birds Friday afternoon as they took flight into the wild for the first time in five months. Seeing the birds fly away after their lengthy rehabilitation, Gibson reflected:
“I think that it’s their success and ours. The birds have worked hard to come to this part. At first we take care of them, we make sure that they’re good, but ours is supportive care. They do the hard work: the exercise and determination. Their determination results in their release. So it’s exciting. And the people who found them, it’s also their success.”
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