Sea Birds Find Friends at a Gulf Coast Hospital

This place is strictly for the birds and they know it.

Miracles happen in the darndest places.

Take this dusty, sun-blistered little no-name acre of land north of St. Petersburg. Its only visual relief is the Gulf of Mexico that licks at its doorstep.

Yet on this petite parcel of terra firma, lives are saved daily, the battered and bruised given succor and an entire species single-handedly wrested from the brink of extinction.

In the process, much of the Florida west coast has become bathed in the residual fame and glory from the efforts of a doughty little outfit called Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary.

The Bird Baron

The man to talk to about the sanctuary’s purpose, aspirations, history and future is a round-faced, curly-mopped, bandito -mustachioed dynamo named Ralph Heath. At 39 he has become a legend in his hometown of Indian Shores and in many points north, south, east and west. Even a Norwegian TV crew trekked down from the frozen tundra to film the “baron of birddom.”

“Our purpose is to rescue, repair, recuperate and, hopefully, release the rehabilitated wild birds native to our area,” Heath said, leading a visitor down the catwalks jammed between about 30 open-air pens that seem to house every species of bird Audubon ever painted.

But I must admit to being initially depressed by the whole place. The birds looked extraordinarily healthy, and a cacophony of busy bird sounds pleasantly tickled at my eardrums, but the sanctuary seemed crowded. And it is unsuitably situated off busy Gulf Boulevard.

Then a cheeky pelican, stepping out for a breath of air, reached up and slyly unsnapped the back of a visitor’s bathing suit top and I fell down laughing. I felt better.

The site for the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary just sort of happened.

In December, 1971, Heath, fresh from pre-med studies at Tampa’s University of South Florida, was driving toward St. Petersburg. “I was out doing some Christmas shopping when I saw this little cormorant dragging a badly broken wing along Gulf Boulevard.”

Heath defied traffic, scooped up the disabled creature and hurried home to his parents’ house on the beach in Redington Shores. His father and mother were not surprised at this Boy Scout deed; their son had been hauling home pets--wounded or no--since age 4.

His father, a retired Tampa surgeon, had taught Ralph a lot about the care of wild things. As a budding naturalist, young Ralph had adopted 350 turtles, 40 alligators and one five-foot caiman that was finally evicted by Mrs. Heath when she met the critter in the hall.

Other Animals

Ralph, by his father’s side, had operated on goldfish (one had a tumor), a snake that had swallowed a wooden egg, dog- and cat-mangled squirrels and a mammalian and avian cast of hundreds. “Pretty soon I got so good at it that only rarely would I have to call for his assistance. . . . I’d sew ‘em right up.”

So it seems that fate sealed an uncertain Ralph Heath’s future in the form of that crippled cormorant. In the days following Maynard the Cormorant’s arrival, wounded birds were thrust on Ralph Heath, who quickly became the unofficial St. Francis of Assisi of Redington Shores.

Friends, relatives, neighbors and total strangers blithely trucked in such wildfowl as a blue heron sickened by polluted water, a duck caught in an oil spill, a bald eagle that had smashed into a power line and many more.

And just like in the movies, a plain cardboard box was left on the Heath’s doorstep one morning. The note said: “Bird inside; please help!” A bedraggled mourning dove with a lacerated wing lay huddled below the folded flaps.

From then on Ralph’s bird haven grew. In no time at all, 400 wounded birds lay in various stages of recuperation in makeshift boxes, crates and cages all over the Heaths’ yard.

In 1972 Heath created his present nonprofit organization so that donations could be accepted to keep the bird infirmary going (the sanctuary accepts no government funding).

Then in 1974 a major disaster loomed. A motel owner in Redington Shores complained about the “noisy birds” and city fathers sent Ralph Heath an eviction notice: The birds would have to go in 30 days.

After weeks of despair, Heath had a flash of remembrance while moping on the beach. He heard a neighbor’s voice ringing in his ears: “You folks own the last house in town.”

Heath dashed inside, dug up his family’s property deed, and joyously discovered that most of their land lies in next-door Indian Shores. All Ralph had to do was edge a few cages north over the city line. But would Indian Shores be glad to inherit Heath and his bird buddies? He was welcomed with open arms.

In the 13th year of the sanctuary’s existence, miracles have been wrought. Full-time staffer Dianna King is one. Through a decade of devoted and sharp scientific work, she has established a detailed research station that collects and codes data on bird activity never known before. And King and Heath’s finest triumph must be the captive breeding of the brown pelican--once an endangered species, now only “threatened,” thanks to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary.

Nurturing Birds

Scientists worldwide applauded Heath when he dug fish hooks out of pelicans’ necks and unwound monofilament line from around their atrophied legs. But they jeered when he decided to nurture the battered birds rather than releasing them and letting them fend for themselves.

Heath not only ignored the carpers, he did what everyone thought at the time was impossible because of the fragile and nervous nature of the birds--he bred pelicans in captivity.

In the spring of 1975 two permanently crippled brown pelicans, Alexis and Salty, produced a perfect pink, featherless offspring suitably christened Pax, Latin for peace. And the voices of the critical know-it-alls stilled a bit.

Heath has happy, healthy pelican babies coming out of his ears. In addition, more than 200 crippled but otherwise healthy pelicans have been sent to zoos nationwide for breeding purposes.

But the greatest tribute to Heath’s devotion and determination in the R&R; of birds is a bone-chilling phenomenon confirmed by TV crews and beach-front condominium owners alike. Sick birds, hungry birds, former avian patients and first-timers somehow know right where Heath lives.

The astonishing tales are legion. In 1980, for instance, a TV crew on site to shoot footage of Heath and his invalids filmed a pelican with a broken wing that dragged itself down the beach a mile to the sanctuary gate.

Another pelican, released several years before, returned to have a hook extracted from its neck. A heron, formerly treated for disease, staggered in one day and collapsed in front of its old pen. (All once-resident birds are tagged for easy identification and tracking.)

“Often we’d find an egret or pelican limping around our door in the morning,” Health said, “peering up with a look that seemed to say: ‘Well, they told me this was the place.’ ”

Indeed it is. The biggest bird hospital in the nation operates around the clock on this squashed little site; the world’s largest captive breeding pelican colony in the world thrives in all its one-legged, one-eyed glory on this smidgen of land.

More than 20,000 birds have been rehabilitated and released from this miniature mooring; 550 wild birds of more than 40 species, on any given day, wolf down 500 to 800 pounds of fish, fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, vitamins and mice.

Heath’s Little Acre is the handsomest sight on Florida’s west coast, bar none.

For more information, contact Ralph T. Heath Jr., Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, 18328 Gulf Blvd., Indian Shores, Fla. 33535.

Open seven days a week, 9 a.m. till dark. Admission free.