Were you to walk through Sabrina’s and my home to its end, you would find yourself in our ‘animal room.’ This is where injured, orphaned, or diseased critters are in-taken and housed until we’re sure they can be moved to outside cages prior to release.
If you step outside that room, there is a small patio, and you would notice a one-story tall dense evergreen of uncertain species growing close thereby. But, like I did for several years, you would dismiss it as ‘just another tree.’ This is justifiable in that on our property there are many others, larger and far more imposing than this little guy.
One day something happened that proved to me how special this tree is. What I’m about to relate happened in the course of one second. I had just set foot out of the animal room to the patio when I heard a screaming shoot past my ear. A small bird flying for its life. Overtop of this screech, a second presence flew so close to my head, I felt the after-draft of its large wing. A Coopers hawk. The wren made it to safety in the density of the evergreen’s boughs, a density the hawk could not penetrate. The hawk was forced to veer off, frustrated at having a meal stolen from it by the sanctuary tree. One second… life in the wild often hangs on such narrow integers.
I first learned of sanctuary trees some years back during a savage several days of rain here in Roanoke. Rivers swelled, over-ran their banks, and carved out the dirt that for decades had anchored large trees. Many trees did not survive the undermining including one massive Chestnut. This tree contained many nests, and for decade after decade, birds of the same species built homes and raised their families there. It came crashing down scattering baby birds everywhere. The bird in question was a Black-Crowned Heron.
A young married couple called us; told us ‘there are millions of baby birds flopping around on the ground!” with parents circling frantically, unable to re-nest their off-spring given the loss of the tree. The couple bought them to us. They were young, newly-wed, and poor [we had to give them money for gas as they made multiple trips to us that day with more victims.] But there was no question where their hearts lay.
A baby Black-Crested Heron is eighteen inches tall with a three inch beak, and a readiness to use it. They stabbed at our eyes. We donned protective glasses and gloves, sutured wounds, straightened and splinted fractured limbs and sent them on to the Wildlife Center of Virginia. Sabrina saved twelve of the thirteen victims bought to us. That was my first exposure to the existence of such a thing as a Sanctuary Tree.
Without question, there are many other trees on our property, great soaring things with protective canopies many stories off the ground. But our newly-released birds feed near the patio; they are immature and not yet capable of the full-powered flight needed to reach those canopies and safety. This little tree sits not ten feet from where they feed, giving them that extra sliver of time to perhaps escape predation.
In the wild, sanctuary – safety or defense – takes many forms: cover or camouflage; branches, burrows, bowers or brambles; and as a part of that overall defense, this little tree, hour after hour, every night and every day looks after his wards.
By Lucky Garvin [email protected]