On A Wing and Prayer

As the dazed brown pelican blinked and put up a feeble fight, Linda Evans examined the two fish hooks lodged near its beak and another embedded deep under its left wing. “See the lump on its wing? That hook has been there for a long time,” Evans said. “I think we’ll have to let the doctor look at this one.”

The pelican was one of hundreds of winged patients who have arrived at Evans’ door in various states of disrepair. Often it is a broken wing or leg, or a fish hook and line, that has rendered the bird flightless.

From the outside, Evans’ home looks like a typical suburban tract house on a winding street on a South County hillside. But beyond the back-yard gate in what was once a garage, she and her husband, Richard, have set up a makeshift bird hospital they call the Pacific Wildlife Project.

“We’ve had them all here--herons, loons, grebes, gulls, falcons, vultures and other birds of prey,” Linda Evans said.

“We even had one blue-footed booby, the first time ever one was sighted in Orange County.”

The project is a natural outgrowth of their marriage, said Evans, 40. The two met five years ago: She was a veterinarian’s assistant from Newport Beach attending a wildlife conference in San Francisco; he, a veterinarian with a clinic in southern Illinois, was one of the speakers.

In the years since, they have, with the help of a volunteer staff, made their home a sort of halfway house for birds, doing what they can to help the birds return to the skies.

Sometimes that means simply untying a tangled fish line. Sometimes, as with the road runner that recently arrived with a broken leg, the wounds are serious enough to require surgery.

“If this looks more like a MASH unit, that’s because that’s what it is,” Evans said, standing in a corner of the garage that serves as the operating room. “Most of our operations are dirty surgeries--those with wounds already contaminated. Remember, these birds are coming in here from the wild.”

Operations are performed either by Richard or by one of the four other veterinarians on call. They work either at the garage or, if necessary, at an animal hospital or clinic.

For a place to recuperate, the birds have the Evans’ back yard. Housed in a string of cages recently were a great blue heron, several pigeons and doves, a bobwhite oriole, two black-crowned night herons, an American avocet, two noisy crows and about a dozen brown pelicans.

The pelicans, members of an endangered species often seen just off the county’s coastline, are the main focus of the project because they tend to get hurt gathering around fishing boats.

The warm waters of this past summer lured more fish to the area, thereby luring more fishermen and more pelicans. The result was an abundance of patients for the Evanses.

Each weekend, project volunteers travel to South County beaches on a “pelican watch,” looking for injured birds that need treatment.

A typical stay at the project for a pelican is about 10 days, Evans said. They are fed about four pounds of fish a day, checked by a vet, then released.

“We’ve treated easily a couple hundred of them this year already,” she said. “We get them in as fast as we can get them out. I’d say we probably release about 12 of them a week.”

But one American white Pelican, Mr. P, has become a permanent resident. Mr. P, who waddles up to greet visitors to the Evanses’ back yard, has been unable to fly since being hit by a car about year ago.

Mr. P enjoys a game of catch with just about anything that will fit in his foot-long beak, and he doesn’t seem to mind being picked up and held.

“The thing about pelicans is that they are so docile,” Evans said. “I’ve seen gulls even sit on a pelican’s head and steal its fish. They tend not to be afraid of people, which can also get them in trouble.”

Any creature is welcome at the project--at least temporarily. If necessary, the animals are transferred to another facility after being treated..

“We turn no animal away here,” Evans said. “We provide emergency medical treatment to all of them, but sea birds and songbirds have become our specialty.”

Evans readily admits that a Laguna Niguel neighborhood is not the ideal place for such an operation, but she says that her neighbors seem to understand that this will have to do until the project can afford to move. The $25,000 the project spends to operate each year comes strictly from donations.

“People who bring a bird to us generally leave a donation,” Evans said. “It has worked out so far, but we’re really straining our location here. In order for this project to survive and continue, we’ve got to find a permanent home.”

Evans is determined to maintain a facility somewhere.

“No other facility takes sea birds,” she said. “That makes them need us so badly.”