The Ruth Melichar Bird Center is a non-profit that rehabilitates birds and gets them back into the wild with a release rate around 75 percent.
On Saturday, this non-profit invited the public out to see the baby birds to generated interest ahead of their busiest time of the year. The Ruth Melichar Bird Center runs on private donations to save around 3,000 birds a year.
"We are here 12 hours a day, seven days a week feeding these babies and watching them grow," said Jennifer Rockwell. "The last part of their development is getting them into our enclosure so they can use their wings and learn how to fly, then we release them and it is very rewarding."
The people that showed up were in for a treat because they got to see a baby owl. The center rescued a two-week-old great horned owl after it fell 40-feet out of its nest.
"It was so cute," said Hannah Roth, who showed up at the baby bird shower. "I love the experience of getting to handle it a little bit and just being able to see it. It was something you don’t get to do everyday."
Hannah Roth will graduate high school this spring and she plans on pursuing wildlife biology at Northwest Nazarene University. After coming to the baby bird shower she is interested in volunteering or getting a job at this center on the north end that has been in Boise for 24-years.
"I think it is really cool and very well organized," said Roth. "I think that the work they do here is super cool and I would love to be a part of it."
That is the point of the baby bird shower along with raising donations. This non-profit relies on private donations and they have a wish list on their website that people can purchase to help them save birds. That information can be found here.
As for the owl, it doesn't have a name because the Ruth Melichar Bird Center only anticipates having it for around five days before they find it a new home.
"We will locate it to another great horned owl family that has babies about his age," said Rockwell. "We will put him in with that family, they will take him in and accept them as their own. So he is going into a foster family of great horned owls."
