Pelican Harbor Seabird Station Executive Director Wendy Fox, left, checks a pelican for injury assisted by Kelli Murphy, right, in her lab at the station. Photo by Mitchell Zachs/MagicalPhotos.com

Outside, a couple of languid ducks waddle through the parking lot, flutter about for a bit and set up shop in a deserted parking spot. Wendy Fox opens the door to her 12 by 15-foot office — a modest room filled with more filing cabinets than space, in the southwest corner of the station’s 980-square-foot facility. In a waning British accent, she introduces herself and her son, Brian Fox.

Nestled in a quiet corner of Biscayne Bay, just outside of these walls basking in the ubiquitous odors of salt water and shrimp, are hundreds of brown pelicans and a multitude of other seabirds.

They are here to be saved.

Fox is the director of the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, quietly located on county-donated land just off the 79th Street Causeway. For 15 years she has worked at this bastion for injured birds — birds found near death after ingesting fishing tackle, their throats entangled with fishing line and hooks, suffering from infected wounds or botulism poisoning from tainted fish and bait, even birds mired in oil slicks, slowly losing their ability to retain body heat as their own feathers poison them.

The birds are also often pushed out of their natural habitat by Miami’s burgeoning skyline and the resulting population boom.

That population increase can be a blessing and a curse for these majestic creatures, according to the optimistic Wendy Fox.

Human interaction is probably the biggest threat to the more than 90 species of birds the nonprofit organization cares for, Fox says. But she doesn’t seem the type to harp on negativity. She would much rather invest her energy into saving seabirds.

“The more people living in populated areas, the less room for wildlife,” she admits, sitting in one of the few chairs at the tiny desk in the front office.

 “It’s sort of a double-edged sword,” she says, “There are more people interested in the environment — more interested in helping the environment.”

More interaction and attention paid to the local wildlife results in more calls for the services of the facility, which staffs the building on holidays, is always open for the drop-off of injured birds and is always on-call. An hour after Hurricane Wilma wreaked havoc on many species’ natural habitats, the building was open for new patients, without electricity or running water. Fox is hardly complaining.

But to even a most objective observer, it is clear the facility could use an expansion, and that’s exactly what the team is now striving to accomplish.

The phone rings as Fox, discussing the proposed expansion’s business plan, motions around the blueprints for the new facility.

Her son Brian returns holding a phone, his eyes wide with concern and needlessly apologetic for interrupting. “There’s a pelican in the middle of the road on Biscayne Boulevard,” he says with urgency. “There’s a man standing guard trying to protect it.”

Wendy Fox sets down the blueprints.

“Would you like to go on a rescue?” she asks.

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Just a few years ago, the seabird station saw an average of about 1,000 birds annually. This year at mid-May the two full-time and two part-time staff, which includes the mother and son team, has already seen 834 birds. The facility averages about 40 calls per day and caters to all kinds of seabird wildlife. “Just not your pet,” Fox says with a chuckle.

With limited funding, the station has its hands full with the thousands of seabirds that would not receive care elsewhere, not to mention the recent Florida brush fires that have brought them more than a dozen migrating warblers per day, where the facility used to see a dozen per year. Disoriented by the smoke, they are flying into buildings and windows.

Natural and human interaction amplifies another double-edged sword to any nonprofit’s expansion: securing funding. The organizers have estimated that the new facility will need about $1 million in donations over two years.

The organization holds an annual fundraiser at The Rusty Pelican and receives an occasional grant, but that will hardly cover the skyrocketing costs of construction. “We’ve always managed very well but now we need this expansion,” Fox says.

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With funds in short supply, the Foxes must use their own cars for rescues.

They rush to the site on Biscayne Boulevard where the man is reportedly standing guard over the pelican in the street. “We really need a pickup truck to rescue the birds,” Wendy says, as Brian shifts around large cages in the back of her black SUV to make room.

Jetting onto the 79th Street Causeway, Wendy tells some of the stories of local heroes who have rescued genuinely injured birds, driving them to the facility from as far as Homestead.

“A 14-year-old boy walked in with a bird in a laundry basket,” she says. “A very lovely man brought in a bird in the back seat of his powder blue Rolls-Royce.”

Birds arrive in the backs of limos, by helicopter and in the arms of the homeless, she says as afternoon traffic shudders down to just one lane approaching Biscayne Boulevard.

Gridlocked behind an 18-wheeler, Wendy’s fingers nervously tap the steering wheel as she runs through the list of supplies they will need for the bird’s potentially dangerous rush-hour rescue. They know they need to get there fast — the bird, scared and confused, could flutter into the path of a speeding car at any moment. Brian’s phone rings. It is staffer Kelli Murphy, who has just spoken to the man who was attempting to protect the pelican.

He listens for a moment, and when he relays the news to his mother, there is clear disappointment in his voice.

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Fox explained that the expanded 2,000-foot facility will include a dedicated hotline that the public could call to report injured and endangered birds. The new station would also have more room for staffers and include a walk-in incubator for baby birds. The money would also help educate the public about human interaction with seabirds via an instructional area, and could add more school field trips.

“Whether we receive 100 donations for $10,000 or one for $1 million, I really believe that people will step up and help injured birds.”

The team can only do what they do thanks to the help of about 20 volunteers and two licensed veterinarians who also volunteer their time. The 501c3 nonprofit organization and facility is almost completely funded by public donations.

Tax documents for the last several years show the organization runs its entire operation on just around $80,000 a year.

“Quite honestly I don’t make enough to live on, but I have a very understanding husband,” Fox says. Not just monetarily, the majority of the facility’s physical presence is devoted to the birds.

Just a turn through the door of the administrative office is a pelican hospital and X-ray machine. During a tour of the station, Fox opens the only other door to the outside, where the room-sized enclosures stand on the edge of the bay, filled with the great glorious birds, blinking and flapping happily about in pelican-sized swimming pools of saltwater.

“This is our little part of paradise in Miami,” she says.

Some pelicans roam freely in the pathway between the rows of cages, as more than 10 feet in the air, black-headed vultures are perched on pilings, not at all vulturey or ominous as one might expect. There are gannets and great blue herons and actually, only about a third of the seabirds at the facility are pelicans.

One little brown pelican, less than a year old and perched on the edge of a pool, has a stretch of first-aid tape on its throat. Underneath its feathers, Fox explains, is a seven-inch suture. “He had such a serious hole in his neck that his esophagus was hanging out,” she says. The tape is to remind caregivers that he can only eat small portions as they nurse him back to health.

In her 15 years at the 27-year-old organization, you would think Wendy Fox had seen it all. “I never get used to cases of animal cruelty,” she says.

She suddenly points excitedly to a tree at the end of one row. “Look! That great blue heron — he’s posturing. He’s probably looking for a girl,” she says. A while ago, just as repairs were about to be made to the roof of one of the enclosures, a couple of those herons decided to start a family right in the middle of it. They raised three heron chicks there. Repairs had to wait.

One young pelican that comes flapping up to Fox accents the dichotomy of the overwhelming beauty of the creatures and human encroachment. It dances around excitedly and cocks its neck to one side while making a peculiar clicking sound. According to Fox the young bird, having been raised and fed by humans, is begging for food — its self-reliance has gone astray. “Now he will not make it in the wild,” she says. “We’re trying to toughen him up.” Murphy secures the bird’s beak with one gloved hand, and scooping him up under her arm, wrestles him into a cage. The lesson becomes solidified. These animals must be appreciated from afar.

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Turning her truck back to the station, Wendy Fox talks about how development and construction impact the birds.

“It’s tremendous,” she says. “Pelicans should be nesting in trees and mangroves on the beach — that doesn’t happen. We do pick up a few of them out of those buildings’ fountains.”

Murphy had convinced the man who was standing in traffic with the pelican to try and get a location for where the bird might have flown. “This is why we need a pickup vehicle with a radio or cell phone,” she says, genuine dismay in her voice. “But look how much time that man took — he stayed with it and I bet he’ll keep an eye out for it.”

If you see an injured seabird call 305-751-9840. Injured birds can be dropped off 24 hours a day at 1279 NE 79th St. Causeway.

The Pelican Harbor Seabird Station’s visiting hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. To find out more about making a tax-deductible donation, call 305-751-9840. To learn more about seabirds or the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station visit www.pelicanharbor.org.

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com.