Return flight: How injured birds are nursed back to health in Glen Ellyn

Jessica Pledge cradles an injured woodpecker in her gloved hands, peeling back its right wing to reveal a serious bruise running along the featherless tract above its right shoulder.

“It’s deep and painful,” says Pledge, a veterinary technician at the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center in Glen Ellyn. “She is pretty uncomfortable, especially when she flaps her wings.”

The woodpecker, a female northern flicker, is slowly waking up from anesthesia. Its eyes are droopy but growing more alert as oxygen begins to replace the isoflurane cocktail used as an anesthetic.

Pledge has just finished taking an X-ray. Woodpeckers, she explains, are “very opinionated about treatment.”

This northern flicker was injured after it flew into a glass window in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood Oct. 27 as it made its way south for winter migration. A volunteer from the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM) collected the injured bird from the sidewalk and made the hourlong drive to Glen Ellyn, where the center’s veterinarians began care.

The flicker’s initial prognosis, written in Sharpie on the brown paper bag where it was briefly held after arrival, reads “concussed + quiet, but alive :)”

This migratory season has been especially violent for birds traveling through Chicago, which sits along the Mississippi Flyway, one of four major migratory routes for birds in North America. The weekend of Oct. 17 to 18 was among the deadliest in recent memory, as more than 1,000 birds were killed or injured in collisions with buildings, according to the CBCM.

The DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center is where hundreds of those injured birds wind up for treatment. From Oct. 17 to 18 alone, the center took in 334 patients.

Sarah Reich, the center’s head veterinarian, said that her team is well-equipped to handle crisis days like that October weekend.

The forest preserve district completed a more than $25 million renovation of the wildlife rehabilitation clinic in January 2026. The 27,000-square-foot facility features new indoor and outdoor rehabilitation areas, including 10 spacious outdoor flight rooms for recovering birds.

“We’re a well-oiled machine,” said Reich. “We’re able to manage whether it's 50 birds or 200 birds.”

Reich and her team communicate extensively with the CBCM so they are adequately prepared when volunteers bring in large numbers.

“If we know it’s going to be a big day, we set up all their carriers, their food and their water dishes to make it easier to move them through the clinic process, the rehab process and into their temporary holding,” said Reich.

Once birds arrive — sometimes in makeshift carriers like McDonald’s bags and Birkenstock boxes — they are transferred into brown paper bags labeled with intake time, collision location and status. The center’s veterinarians have learned that woodpeckers, like the northern flicker, need two.

Veterinarians will then conduct a flight test to look for clear signs that a bird needs to stay in the facility. Those signs range from droopy eyes that signal a concussion to injured wings and shoulders, said wildlife education expert Stephanie Touzalin.

If staff determines that additional care is needed, they will conduct a full physical examination in the center’s clinic, which has glass windows so visitors can observe veterinarians at work.

Reich described two different recovery tracks, depending on the severity of a bird’s injury.

She starts patients with head trauma or light bruising on a few days of “medical management.” Birds are given pain management medication, and veterinarians conduct daily checkups to observe bruising and ensure that the birds are eating normally.

They are then transferred to one of the center’s three bird rooms. The specific room is contingent on a number of factors, including age, health and species. American woodcocks typically rest with baby birds in the bird nursery because they are better in a quiet space. White-throated sparrows are housed in the adult bird room with visual barriers placed over their cage to keep them calm and speakers playing noise from their natural habitats.

After another three to four days, veterinarians conduct another flight test to determine if a bird is ready to be released.

“Usually we can get them right back out there, even if they have been resting in a smaller space, because they don’t lose muscle mass or flight conditioning quickly,” said Reich.

Generally, the center releases migratory birds on forest preserve property. A creek adjacent to the Wildlife Conservation Center has historically served as a soft reentry point before birds continue on their journeys south.

Those with more serious injuries, such as the common shoulder girdle fracture, have longer recovery times that often require flight conditioning in one of the center’s 10 outdoor flight rooms, where they remain for a minimum of two weeks.

“That brings the challenge of timing,” Reich explained. “An injury that they could have healed in two weeks, if they miss that migration window, they could be with us for five months.”

The center has ample space to “overwinter” birds that miss their migratory windows. Once spring rolls around, staff monitors migration patterns through eBird, a tool developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that provides real-time updates as migratory birds pass through the Chicago area.

“We can see, ‘Oh, great! white-throated sparrows are back in our area. It’s a fantastic time to release white-throated sparrows,’” said Reich.

While the majority of the center’s efforts are dedicated toward animal rehabilitation, the newly renovated facility contains a series of exhibits designed to educate the public on how they can treat their windows to decrease collisions.

One exhibit features examples of artfully designed bird-friendly glass, which Reich hopes will counter the misconception that builders have to sacrifice aesthetics to protect migratory birds.

“The options we have are actually quite pretty; they’re tastefully done,” she said.

The center’s veterinarians hope that there will not be any more “crisis days” in the foreseeable future as migration hits a steep decline at the beginning of November. Reich and her staff will treat patients for general trauma resulting from weather-related issues and entrapment through the winter before a busy spring tending to baby birds.

Reich, however, shies away from closing the book on a tough migratory season.

“We live in a very superstitious world,” she said. “I don’t want to ever say, ‘No, we’re done.’”

hhorowitz@dailyherald.com