- Hello, I'm Karen Kalunian, host of "Animal Talk."

Today, wildlife rehabber Sheida Soleimani takes us into her wild bird rehabilitation center right in the basement of her home.

She'll teach us all about Chimney Swifts and take us behind the scenes as she caress for an injured falcon before releasing it back into the wild.

Let's go!

(light cheerful music) (gentle guitar music) (rain tapping) - I've been rehabbing these guys since I was 20 years old, and you'll never see them on the ground because they're always in the air.

Like if you ever see them on the ground, it's either because they're dead or like their wing is broken and they can't fly.

It's really special being able to like just see something, you know, so rare so up close.

They're also in like deep constant decline population wise.

The first few years, it took me a long time, because they're such chattery little birds, they kind of just like move their mouths a lot.

They don't like all types of bugs.

They'll spit things out at you, which is like infuriating.

They get dehydrated really easily.

So you have to be able to put like drops of water one by one on the tips of their beaks and into their nares.

So that's always pretty intense.

The chimney swifts all came in from people that found them in their chimney, and a lot of people don't know what they are, because they're so strange looking and they don't sound like birds.

They'll call and they'll be like, "Oh my God, I think I had a bat fall down my chimney.

But like, I think it has feathers.

I don't know."

Sometimes they're like so pink and like brand new that people think they are bats.

And so I always ask them to send photos.

It fell down a chimney.

And it's, you know, this time of year, July through August, I'm almost always certain that it's a chimney swift and I raise them from when they're like a day old sometimes up until they're release age.

(gentle guitar music) My phone number's public and when people find injured animals, they'll either call me directly or they'll call the Wildlife Clinic of Rhode Island that will send them to me for birds or baby birds, and then they come, I give them my address, they show up, and then they drop the bird off at my doorstep, and there's a whole like fill out of a form, you know, kind of procedure they have to do, and then I go upstairs, get the animal, bring it downstairs and assess it.

This bird ran into a window and has a little bit of, I don't, I didn't palpate any noticeable wounds, but it... Let's see.

Hey, honey.

(falcon shrieking) (light guitar music) I'm not feeling anything broken.

So you're always looking for asymmetries and seeing if you feel any like kind of crunching of the bones.

(falcon shrieking) You wanna keep stress down.

So we're gonna cover the head while I do the exam on the legs., You're having a great time, huh?

(falcon shrieking) Yeah.

He looks good.

(falcon shrieking) Lemme go ahead and put him back in to keep stress down.

(light guitar music) - [Karen] To watch more videos like this, visit ripbs.org/animaltalk.