ON A WING AND A PRAYER : Many a sparrow--or hawk or owl--that falls from the sky is healed and returned to the wild by dedicated bird ‘rehabbers.’

After 10 years of taking in injured and orphaned hawks, owls, songbirds and just about anything else that ends up on her doorstep on a wing and a prayer, Judy Everett wonders whether all her care and nursing make any difference. Lately, she says, it seems the birds are dropping from the skies faster than she and her partner, Lew Johnson, can pick them up.

“When such a large percentage of all the birds we get are victims of man-made circumstance, you know something is drastically wrong in the environment,” said Everett, 41, of West Covina. “It’s frightening.”

She and Johnson, her neighbor, are two of an estimated 40 to 60 people in the Los Angeles area who are licensed by the state Department of Fish and Game to temporarily keep songbirds and birds of prey to treat them for injury and disease.

For years, both had cared for birds in their respective homes and backyard aviaries --Johnson as a falconer and Everett as a rehabilitator--but they began working together only three years ago, when Johnson asked Everett to take a look at an orphaned crow his wife, Caryn, had brought home.

Their mutual love of birds made them instant friends, and Johnson, 32, gave up falconry to become a “rehabber.”

But even with the added pair of helping hands, Everett, who has rehabilitated more than 800 birds and successfully released 80% of the them back into the wild, says the workload is anything but light.

“We want to get them back in the sky, where they belong,” she said.

She and Johnson are currently caring for 22 birds of prey and seven songbirds, and recently had to refuse an injured owl for lack of space.

Both rehabilitators belong to the nonprofit organization AWARE (Alliance for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education), which has more than 90 members in the Los Angeles area. But Everett says there is a shortage of dedicated rehabbers, leaving many needy birds with no place to go.

Some are picked up by good Samaritans with only the best intentions. But that can spell doom for the bird, Johnson said, unless it is given skilled care.

“Once, we got a call from a very wealthy couple who had found three orphaned woodpeckers,” Johnson said. “They thought the birds looked sick, so they fed them expensive vodka through an eyedropper. They said they thought it would beef them up.”

But, said Everett, “it beefed one of them right into the next world. The other two lived, but they were pretty drunk.”

Johnson believes ignorance is the birds’ greatest foe.

“It’s not that people don’t care,” he said. “They just don’t know. We have to have good knowledge of math and chemistry, and we weigh the birds to see how many calories they need. It’s very technical.”

The birds come to the rehabilitators through animal shelters, private individuals, game wardens and others. Upon arrival, the patient undergoes a complete physical, usually conducted by Everett, whose small fingers can detect tiny, broken bones.

Blood and fecal analysis follows, and “sometimes we have to set a wing or administer medication,” said Everett, whose husband, Bob, a chemist, calculates medical dosages.

Johnson estimates that it costs $40 to $45 a month to feed a bird of prey. Those birds--falcons, hawks and owls--eat mostly rodents, which the rehabbers buy from pet stores, laboratory animal dealers and feed stores.

Everett figures that it costs about $35 to support a songbird, which eats less costly seeds and insects.

For a time, Everett raised her own rats to save the $1 to $2.50 it costs to buy each of the rodents, but the smell forced her to give that up, at least for the summer. She plans to start again when the weather cools.

“My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told her breeding rats,” she said.

Meanwhile, Everett and Johnson try to meet expenses by contracting with schools to give conservation lectures, during which they display permanently disabled birds and emphasize the importance of the food chain and the effect that disruptions of the chain have on the environment.

Still, costs of caring for the birds often comes from the rehabilitators’ own pockets.

Everett believes the public is oblivious to the rate at which extinction of wild species is occurring. In the last few years, she said, she has noticed a marked decline in the populations of once-plentiful birds such as red-tailed hawks and great horned owls.

“It gets worse every year,” she said. “Progress is squeezing out wildlife at such a rapid rate. We get birds that have flown into windows or high wires or have been hit by cars, or knocked out of their nests by tree trimmers--but what really gets me is that many of them have been shot.”

For eight months, the two have been caring for a red-tailed hawk they call “Conan,” after a movie character with uncivilized qualities. But Johnson said the person who abused the bird is the real barbarian.

“Conan was found running through the streets with a bullet through his back and a rope tied around his legs,” he said, adding that the bird’s wing and tail feathers had been clipped in what Johnson suspects was an effort to make a pet of the hawk and prevent it from flying.

Sources of Harm

Everett said it is difficult to pinpoint the greatest source of harm to birds.

“Sometimes, it seems everything we get has been hit by a car or poisoned,” she said, explaining that people who poison rats and other rodents often do not realize that they might inadvertently be killing hawks or owls that depend on those rodents for food.

“Then we’ll get a rash of birds that have been shot, and you want to go out and destroy all the pellet guns.”

But the fastest-growing threat, she said, is the theft and illegal sale of eggs and baby birds from the nest.

sh Wanted as Mascots

“Birds of prey are going for $300 to $10,000 apiece on the black market,” Everett said. “It’s a macho thing. Lew gets offers from motorcycle gangs to trap hawks so they can use them as mascots. Of course, he would never accept.”

According to Johnson, hawk talons are also popular as necklaces and decorations for car mirrors.

California Fish and Game Warden Ken Walton, whose territory includes the San Gabriel Valley, strongly praises the conservation efforts of Johnson and Everett, and agrees with their allegations about bird theft.

“There is a black market in the bird business,” Walton said. “Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens whenever restrictions are placed on any kind of animal, and the fees are exorbitant.”

Tight Restrictions

Celeste Cushman, state coordinator of falconry for the California Department of Fish and Game, said state-licensed falconers (there are about 600) are permitted to take birds from the nest, but only if the falconer has been specifically authorized to do so, and a falconer is not permitted to take the last bird in a clutch, or nest.

Unauthorized taking of birds, she says, is a misdemeanor that can result in a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail.

“But we don’t have any figures as to what’s been illegally taken,” Cushman said. “It’s a difficult thing to enforce.”

She cited as an example an investigation conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1981 to 1984 in an effort to foil a bird-smuggling ring responsible for the theft of endangered bird species and their eggs. Operation Falcon culminated with more than 30 arrests in 14 states.

Controversial Action

“There was a lot of controversy over it,” Cushman said. Some praised the effort, while critics claimed that it violated the very law (the Endangered Species Act of 1973) it was trying to enforce, harassed reputable bird handlers on technicalities and contributed to the deaths of some of the rare birds it was intended to protect.

Everett estimates that 25% of the birds she has cared for this year were either stolen from the nest or trapped illegally, compared to 10% to 15% last year.

She draws her conclusions from specific problems that many man-raised birds exhibit when they come into her care.

“They have osteoporosis (brittle bones) from improper diets, diseases of the feet and mouth, and evidence of physical abuse,” she said.

‘How Many Never Make It’

But she says the birds she really worries about are the ones she never sees.

“I wonder how many never make it. There are usually three red-tailed hawks per clutch, so when we get a bird like Conan, I wonder what those people did with the other two birds in the nest.”

Now that Conan is regaining his health, Everett and Johnson plan to release him in a few months, but the bird first must build up his atrophied pectoral muscles through exercise if he is to have a chance at survival, Johnson said.

“That’s a problem,” he said. “We’re trying to get up the money to build a flight aviary at the San Dimas Nature Center, but until then, we have to fly the birds on creances (leashes or tethers). That takes a lot of time and energy, and it’s almost impossible to fly all the birds that way.”

Release to the Wild

Another dilemma involves the actual release.

“You should see what we go through trying to decide where to let them go,” Johnson said. “I bought a four-wheel-drive and we take the birds as high up the mountains as possible so no one can get to them.”

Many of the birds will not escape man’s encroachment, but Johnson and Everett try not to dwell on that.

“Everything on Earth isn’t forever,” Everett said, “and somebody has to care and keep going or we’ll be seeing species die out like never before.”

She shook her head, then turned her attention to a tiny, orphaned Western kingbird, which begged for food with a wide-open beak. She gave it a small spoonful of dinner, and when the bird finally settled down again, Everett took on a maternal glow.

“Sometimes, I think, what’s the use? But then somebody brings me a fuzzy little baby bird and it starts all over again.”