It isn’t easy to get a bird from injured or orphaned to flying free, back in the wild.  But it can be done!

 But we need your help to do it…please donate today…every bird that is rescued and flies free again only flies because your kind donations made that freedom possible.

THANK YOU…please keep it up! 
The CEI is a registered Charity
No. 0916387 – 54
Charity Business No. 13362 9097 RR0001,

Using Canada Helps to support the work of the CEI really does help! 

Or, if you prefer, you can also help us by sending a cheque to 
P.O. Box 484, Cochrane Alberta, T4C 1A7, Canada.

For anyone donating from Alberta, the government has a new program, Community Spirit, which is aimed at doubling the $$ for Charity.   Albertans now receive a 50 cent tax credit on every $1.00 donated over a donation threshold of $200…so if you donate $200, you will receive a $100 tax credit!
Also under the Community Spirit program, for every individual who donates to a Charity in Alberta the government will match a certain percentage of those $$

Over the past 36 years the CEI has been rescuing, repairing or rearing, injured and orphaned birds…here are some pictures. 
Some adult birds are NOT happy to be rescued -

But they get accustomed to living at the CEI

Sometimes they even have to think twice about leaving regular ‘room service’ at the CEI to go to work hunting for their own food!

or they still have some learning to do.

We always release raptors on the 160 wild acres of the CEI land so they can come back to be fed if they are unsuccessful hunting…years ago when falconers trained young birds to hunt, they did it in the same way, by flying them “at Hack”.    

If our orphaned or repaired raptors (hawks, falcons, buteos, ospreys, eagles, owls) do return to be fed they only do it for a week or so and then they fly away to successfully live their own lives again.

Because the CEI’s protected 160 acres is made up of a wide variety of ecosystems (woodland, prairie, pond and bog), is out in the country, and on a migration route it is ideal for releasing many species of birds.

Only a country rehabilitation centre with a substantial amount of land, like the CEI, can provide this gentle release into the wild. City or small town facilities, just because they are in the city or don’t have much land, must transport their birds to the countryside and release them.

This is a less gentle method of release because the birds have nowhere to return to if their hunting is unsuccessful.  So the CEI works in partnership with the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society their birds or animals can come to us for a while prior to release and once released will always have food available to them.

Baby birds of all sorts have a lot to learn and need a protected place to learn it!

Some birds aren’t sure if they a goose or a moose
 

But eventually they all fly free once more