Avian Haven

08/25/2026

Four different rat poisons. That’s what toxicologists found in Flaco the owl’s bloodstream when he died.

You probably remember Flaco — the Central Park owl who escaped his zoo enclosure in 2023 and learned to fly free for the first time in his life. A new documentary, Wild Inside, tells his story. The heartbreaking twist: a necropsy found rodenticide in his system that likely impaired his coordination before a fatal building collision.

We see this here in Maine too. Poisoned rodents become easy targets for owls and hawks — and the poison moves up the food chain into them. We treat raptors every year for secondary rodenticide poisoning.

The fix is simple:

🐤 Use live or secured snap traps instead of poison
🐤 Seal up gaps and food sources
🐤 Put up an owl nest box for natural, chemical-free pest control
🐤 Talk to your neighbors — poison doesn’t respect property lines

Read the full story on our blog: https://www.avianhaven.org/blog/flaco

Found a sick or injured bird? We have volunteers across the state ready to help. (207) 382-6761

Like and share to help spread the word!

Photo by David Lei

08/24/2026

Eagle patients flies free 🦅

08/18/2026

🐦 Summer birding tip from a Maine expert: "Put the watching back in birdwatching."

We sat down with Derek Lovitch of Freeport Wild Bird Supply — author of How to Be a Better Birder and Birdwatching in Maine — for his take on getting the most out of birding this season.

His #1 tip? Put the phone down. Watch the bird, not the checklist. The more we truly observe — how a bird moves, sings, feeds — the easier it becomes to know it on sight.

His two simple asks for protecting Maine's birds:
🐤 Keep cats indoors
🐤 Treat your windows to prevent collisions

Together, these two changes save an estimated billions of birds across our continent every year.

Fall migration is already underway — shorebirds are peaking now, songbirds take over in September. Wherever you are, "just add water" (a pond, a coastline, even a birdbath) and you'll find more birds than you think.

Every bird we take in at Avian Haven is a reminder of how much these "amazing and incredible, highly-evolved creatures" need us paying attention — both in the field and at home. Your support helps us be there when they need it most. 💛

👉 Read the full interview and support our work: https://www.avianhaven.org/blog/birdwatching

08/17/2026

Release report! This American Bittern patient has returned to the skies and marshes of Maine!!

08/17/2026

There is a Thick-Billed Murre sitting on a beach in Scarborough out of season. You’ve been calling with questions, so we asked a professional for answers:

There is a Thick-Billed Murre sitting on a beach in Scarborough out of season. You’ve been calling with questions, so we asked a professional for answers.

08/12/2026

Celebrating our wonderful interns! Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the birds this summer. We’ll miss you!!

08/11/2026

Back in February, we admitted a peregrine falcon with significant wing fractures to the carpometacarpus (the portion of the wing that includes the bones of the "hand"). The bird was transferred to us from Avian Haven for fracture management.

Because this area of the wing has a more limited blood supply, fractures like these may not always have a good outcome. Fortunately, with intensive care and fracture management, the peregrine successfully healed both the fractures and associated wounds, and we returned the bird to Avian Haven for initial flight conditioning.

For a peregrine falcon, however, simply flying in a large enclosure is not enough to appropriately determine whether the bird has regained the skills needed to survive in the wild after an injury like this. Peregrines are highly specialized aerial predators, and successful release requires not only strength and endurance, but also speed, agility, and precision needed to hunt.

From the early stages of this peregrine’s care, we were in communication with Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife about partnering with an appropriately qualified master falconer to complete the final stage of conditioning and evaluate the falcon for full release readiness. We were lucky to find such a partnership.

Over the last several months, this peregrine worked with a team of two falconers on building stamina, strength, and acrobatic flight abilities, which progressed to successful prey capture. After several months of care, we are thrilled to share that this remarkable bird was very recently released back into the wild!

We are grateful to everyone whose efforts made this outcome possible. Wildlife rehabilitation is truly a team effort, and this peregrine's journey is a wonderful example of what can be accomplished when we all work together.

What makes this release even more special is that peregrine falcons are a state-endangered species. With only 33 breeding pairs of peregrine falcons in Maine, each individual matters, particularly mature adults such as this one.

📸Photo by Sandra Mitchell: https://sandra-mitchell.com

08/11/2026

400+ bird species call Maine home. Every single one that comes through our doors gets a different care plan — because no two patients are alike.

We sat down with Senior Rehab Tech Athena Furr to find out what actually happens behind the scenes.

Athena didn't set out to become a rehabber. She landed at Avian Haven as a Unity College student needing an internship credit — not even much of a bird person at the time. "I just kind of fell into it," she says, "and I fell in love with birds." That internship became a career.

Every bird goes through the same careful process: decompression time, then a beak-to-tail physical exam, joint by joint, in the same order every time — "so that we don't skip anything or miss anything." From there, the standards for release are anything but one-size-fits-all:

🐤 An owl can be released with just one working eye — it hunts mostly by hearing
🐤 A crow must return to its exact home territory, or its own family will treat it as a stranger
🐤 A loon has to prove it can dive and stay properly waterproofed
🐤 Nestling songbirds may stay nearly two months, growing and learning to fly from scratch
🐤 An adult with head trauma might be ready to go home in a month or less

"You have five different answers usually," Athena says, "because every patient, even if it's the same species, is very different."

Wildlife rehabilitation is still a young science — there's no standard textbook with all the answers. We’re grateful to have the help of our consulting vet, Dr. Avery Berkowitz from Maine Wildlife Rehabilitation

Early in her career, Athena handled wound care alone on a badly injured great horned owl — and later watched that same owl fly free. "That was a total full circle," she says.

This is the work your support makes possible: the time, the training, and the individualized care it takes to give each of Maine's 400+ bird species a real shot at going home.

📞 Found an injured or orphaned bird? Call our hotline at (207) 382-6761 — we have volunteers across the state ready to bring birds to us.

08/10/2026

Thank you to everyone who has donated fish to us over the last week! We’re all stocked up. We want to particularly shout out Ed’s Live Bait in Cushing for the live fish to feed the Common Loons as they strengthen and get ready to release.

08/05/2026