A brown pelican recently rehabilitated at BC-SPCA's Wild ARC and released back to the wild off the shores of Victoria is back in care.
After being released near Race Rocks in August, she somehow suffered another injury and had to be rescued at Esquimalt Lagoon.
Sara Dubois, BC-SPCA's Chief Scientific Officer, says she was doing well, and they can only speculate on how she was injured this time:
" This time we have noticed it does have a wound kind of under its wing pit, if you want to describe that area. So we don't quite know what happened. There is some speculation it might have been an off-leash dog attack, but we don't know. So all we do know is that we can treat the wound."
Dubois says challenges will be keeping her stress levels down, and keeping her weight up during treatment.
Brown pelicans were on the brink of disappearing from North America between 1950 and 1970 due to the use of chemicals like DDT. They were listed as endangered until 2009.
Vancouver Island is at the northern-most point of their breeding range.