The suburban living room in northern Virginia looks like any other - bright, well furnished, and dominated by cheerful paintings and a jumbo-sized color television against the far wall.
That's at first glance.
Step inside for a closer look. "Caw! Caw!" Inky, a crow, blasts a full-scale alert from her headquarters opposite the dinning room table. Sitting at the table, a Washington suburbanite, Carl Roper, is saving a life. In his left hand, he holds a plastic syringe full of liquid bird food. With his right, he strokes the frazzled head of a half-starved house sparrow.
"C'mon," croons Roper, as he gently inserts the syringe tip into the sparrow's narrow beak. "C'mon, you little fool!"
Inky glares from her nearby cage and provides a steady stream of unsolicited medical advice. Like a harried nurse, Mrs. Puff, a fantail pigeon, stalks up and down the length of her silver cage.
"Okay," soothes Roper as the panicked bird attempts to flap from his grasp. "Okay, hold it, little guy!" He pushes the plunger on the syringe. The liquid food streams into the sparrow's gullet. He gently returns the malnourished victim to his hospital bed. "You're a real sweetie, aren't you?"
For the Ropers, the battle to save this sparrow has just begun. During the next few days, the weakened bird will require regular feedings of a high caloric nutrient.
"They're God's creatures, that's all," explains Carl, when asked why he spends so many hours working on injured pigeons, sparrows, robins, starlings, and doves.
"I've never really thought much about why I like to take care of birds. I guess it's just that I don't like to see any creature suffer, if I can help it."
His wife Lynda says that caring for about three hundred sick or injured birds each year has helped her family learn more about wildlife. "We just like wildlife, and especially birds - they're very educational for the kids. Our seven-year-old daughter, Virginia, can spot a yellow-bellied sapsucker a mile away!"
Working as trained and state-licensed "bird rehabilitators," Carl and Lynda Roper belong to an extensive network of wildlife-rescue volunteers scattered across northern Virginia. As members of a local organization called "The Wild Bird Rescue League of Northern Virginia," they reflect the rapidly growing concern for our dwindling wildlife population.
Bird care beginnings
Carl works as a security specialist for the federal government in Washington when he's not tending sick sparrows. His sensitivity to threatened wildlife was roused about four years ago when he found a pigeon with a broken wing on the asphalt at the neighborhood gas station.
"That bird was hurting, so I knew I had to do something. I mean, if a person
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