COEUR d’ALENE — Doctors help individuals.
Dr. Ken Helal took that an action even more when he assisted an osprey in difficulty, and most likely saved its life.
Not that he would confess.
“I’m not a hero, by any means,” Helal said Thursday.
Helal was on-call Aug. 5 and needed to remain near home, so he went to picture osprey in a nest on a platform near Higgens Point for the very first time in about a years.
“It was kind of serendipitous that I went out there,” he said.
Through his 600mm Canon lenses, Helal observed that a person of the young osprey appeared to have a fishing line connected to its left claw.
Later, once again through the long lenses, he saw a branch was connected to line, avoiding the bird from attempting to fly.
It might flap its wings enough to increase in the air simply above the nest, however was “certainly limited by this,” Helal said.
“It’s left root was covered respectable,” he said.
Helal called Birds of Prey Northwest.
Jane Veltkamp, raptor biologist and director of the not-for-profit raptor education and rescue center based in St. Maries, understood what to do.
She initially relied on Coeur d’Alene’s Parks Director Bill Greenwood for help to make it through gates for access to the platform about 50 feet off the ground.
Access protected, Veltkamp connected to Avista for pail truck help to reach the nest and the knotted osprey.
“It was trying to fledge, however might not, due to the fishing line entangling it,” Veltkamp said.
Another young osprey resides in the nest, and both moms and dads were still doing what moms and dads do.
The rescue operation got a little simpler when the approaching Avista teams most likely scared the young osprey, triggering it to break without the line and take her very first effective flight, Veltkamp said.
“It found the energy to break that fishing line,” she said.
A piece of the line stayed stuck, however Veltkamp hopes it will not be troublesome.
“The bird is free now,” she said.
“It truly takes a village in these types of situations to come to the aid of a young osprey,” Veltkamp said.
She said this is the time of year when recentlies established are preparing yourself to wing it by themselves. In about a month osprey will leave North Idaho and head for Central America, or perhaps as far as South America.
She said if Helal hadn’t found the fishing line and looked for help, the osprey likely would have died as the rest of its family would have needed to leave in the past winter season.
“The bird would have died there,” she said.
Veltkamp said, unfortunately, it’s not unusual for osprey and other birds of victim to get tangled in fishing line.
“These things occur when people carelessly discard their fishing line,” she said.
Helal hopes others who see a hurt bird look for help.
He minimized his function and credited Veltkamp for her efforts.
“She did the leg work,” he said.
Anyone who see an osprey in distress, can call Birds of Prey Northwest 208-582-0797.
