Frigate bird injured in storm fighting for its life

A storm-tossed frigate bird rescued from a tree in Healdsburg during last weekend's rainstorm was in critical condition Tuesday at the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia.

Tentatively identified as a juvenile Magnificent Frigatebird, a tropical species rarely seen in Northern California, the seabird was cold and emaciated when rescuers prodded it from a pine tree near Memorial Beach on Saturday afternoon.

"I thought I had seen a fairy tale," said Mela Brasset of Healdsburg, a volunteer with the Bird Rescue Center in Santa Rosa who retrieved the exotic bird that has long black wings, a hooked beak and white head and chest.

An adult of the species is typically about 40 inches long with a wingspan exceeding seven feet.

Healdsburg Animal Control officers and a window washer, Richard Martinez, who supplied a tall ladder, assisted in the unusual rescue in pouring rain.

No one knows how the frigate bird got there, but experts assume it was caught in strong winds and blown into the tree, where it appeared to be trapped.

"You could tell it was in trouble," Brasset said. "It was basically up there dying."

Brasset ferried the bird to the Santa Rosa center, and within an hour it was on its way to the Cordelia facility. Still under intensive care on Tuesday, the bird was receiving fluids, nutrients and antibiotics from an intravenous tube, said Karen Benzel of the research center.

The center, which treated hundreds of avian victims from the San Francisco Bay oil spill in December, is now caring for more than 100 storm-injured birds -- including grebes, murres and fulmars -- recovered from Monterey to Sonoma County.

Jay Holcomb, research center director, said the frigate bird was the first of its species to be treated there in its 37-year history.

If the bird recovers it will be transferred to the Bird Rescue Research Center in Los Angeles and released into the wild, Benzel said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.