Being in the right place at the right time — that describes a situation a San Diego woman found herself in recently.
It was a couple of weeks ago on a rainy, windy day. Sophia Alexander found herself locked out of her Bay Park office. She had a Zoom meeting to attend, so she drove around the neighborhood to a quiet side street, and parked.
"I happened to look over, and I see, and I was like, ‘What is that?’ It looks like a little fluffy thing, I thought it was a rock actually at first, but then it started moving, and I was like, 'that’s not a rock for sure,'" said Alexander.
For sure, it was not a rock. Alexander switched from Zoom to her camera and this is what she saw.
“I saw like, a breathing pattern happening with this little fluffy guy, and so I was like, 'Is that a bird?' And it kind of resembled an owl, and I was like, 'Is that a baby owl?'” Alexander said.
That’s exactly what it was — a baby owl, a nestling. It had fallen out of its nest.
Alexander said she called her supervisor who told her not to worry about work and to make sure the owl was OK.
Meantime, the weather was taking a turn for the worse. She knew she had to do something, but she didn’t want to scare the bird, so she went from camera to phone, and called the San Diego Humane Society. They arrived about 20 minutes later.
"So, I made sure to stay here until they came to pick him up, just to make sure he was good," Alexander said.
The nestling was brought to the Humane Society’s Wildlife Center, where it got a thorough check-up.
“We take in sick, injured and orphaned wildlife, so anything from an orphaned baby squirrel or possum or raptors that get hit by cars," Chantal Larose said.
Larose is the San Diego Humane Society's Wildlife Operations Manager. After determining the baby bird was OK, they wanted to get it back home as quickly as possible.
The nest was located, right above from where Sophia Alexander found the nestling.
“Once we established that the nest was active, that the parents were still around, we got in contact with West Coast Arborists," Larose said.
West Coast Arborists are indispensable when it comes to re-nesting birds. They have a cherry picker.
“It’s the only way that we could reach the nest … it’s like 50 feet in the air," Larose said.
The arborists saw that the nest was on the small side, and there were already two nestlings in it. So, they expanded the size of the nest, and put the nestling back in.
Back at the scene of the fall, the Humane Society had put a notice on the tree, informing people of the nest, and requesting they leave it alone until the owls are finished using it.
When we were there shooting this story, we looked up and there she was, Momma Owl and one of her nestlings, peering down at us.
It's safe to say that all involved in this raptor rescue hope the next time a nestling leaves the nest, it doesn't fall — but flies!
