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Sheena Rees' bird sanctuary

	Sheena Rees with hawk

For more than a decade, Sheena Rees, a retired social worker, ran her Bird Sanctuary from a terraced cottage in Glastonbury, Somerset. It was the ultimate expression of her unbounded love and compassion for our furred and feathered friends that went back to when, aged four, she found a seagull with a broken wing on a lonely beach in Arran, Scotland. Taking it home she nursed it back to health, and never forgot her uttermost joy when, returning to the beach, she opened her trembling, cupped hands and set the seagull free - "It's wings took flight and something inside me also soared. From that time on I knew I could never turn away from an injured bird." And Sheena never did! As her Bird Sanctuary clearly bore daily witness.

By 1996, aged 72, Sheena Rees' fame and reputation had spread far and wide. Those who best knew her dedicated work with injured and abandoned birds accorded her the sobriquet, the Bird Woman of Glastonbury. Even the Department of the Environment awarded her the rare distinction of "A license to rehabilitate and keep wild birds!" And being Sheena Rees she kept her little sick birds as only she knew how! Using an admixture of love, patience, homeopathic remedies and her own special kind of healing she nursed them until they were well enough to be liberated back into the wild.

Yet, it was always hard for Sheena to let them go - "Right now I have a wonderful Mistlethrush nearly ready for release," she wrote to Onaway "but it will break my heart to let her go for she is my great helper - peering into all the cages to make sure her kindred birds are all right. One morning at 6am I came down and Mistlethrush met me in great excitement and flew to the Robin's cage. Approaching, I saw that Robin had caught his little claws in the water dish - Mistle was so happy when he was freed!"

Not all birds could be released back into the wild. Magaluf, a magpie was a permanent resident. "She is slightly autistic," explained Sheena, "She cannot fly but mothers every bird who runs around the floor. Still, she eats, drinks, bathes, preens and seems to enjoy her little life. Sometimes she says 'come on, come on in' when she hears me saying the same to my dog!"

Finches, Warblers, Sparrows, Blackbirds, Starlings, Blue Tits, Parrots, Owls - all came to Sheena's Bird Sanctuary and into her loving care and keeping. "What else can I do but take in every little injured scrap of bird-life brought to the door. Bird rescue is my work for God and I give the same 100% to the people who bring the birds as I do to the birds themselves," whispered Sheena.

Giving 100 per cent is laudable and brings commensurate results, but for the giver there is an equal price to pay. For Sheena, living with and not apart from Nature carried its exacting responsibilities. "I go to bed at 10pm, set the alarm for midnight, then for 2am and 4am and finally at 6am. In this way I work through the night, feeding, watering and cleaning until 9am!" Inevitable exhaustion depleted Sheena's resources and illness increasingly clouded her days.

In November 1999 Sheena wrote to Onaway reporting that someone had found a duck by the roadside, scrabbling along with two broken legs and a shot clean through one wing. Naming it 'Coco', Sheena performed her magic. "My vet said I should put her down but I couldn't because she has total trust in humans. She is a Mallard duck and talks away to me all the time. I reply in the same gobble - gobble - gobble! Both her legs are splinted and every hour I bathe her feet to keep the webbed parts from perishing. How can people be so heartless as to breed a bird and then get pleasure from shooting it? Well, I suppose I know the answer - it's for the money they get from the shooting parties they organise." Indeed, but now the duck was in the best of hands, Sheena's! Newspaper reporters from as far as Germany travelled to Glastonbury after hearing Sheena had sacrificed her bath for the duck - filling it with "duck weed from the River Brue along with water snails and other grubs."

In her latter years, Sheena had a desire to write about the "imbalance in ecology where cats are concerned". She reported that 90 per cent of birds taken into her Sanctuary in 1999 were cat casualties and commented that this was the chief cause for the decimation of songbirds. "I trained my own cats not to hunt for birds so I know it can be done." Sadly, Sheena passed away before the book could be realised.

In one of her last letters to Onaway, Sheena wrote of her life: "Most of all I thank the Creator for my childhood in Arran, my training in meteorology, being in the WAAF, living in Glastonbury, having lovely friends all along the way - and working with my birds."

From 1996 to 2000 Onaway gave financial as well as spiritual support to Sheena Rees and her Bird Sanctuary. This was at a time when her own life-savings had been all but expended and the Sanctuary was faced with closure. Onaway was privileged and proud to do so.

"It was her own compassionate heart that lay at the very centre of her Bird Sanctuary. When last I saw her, cradling a tiny, featherless bird in the cup of her hands, I marvelled at her enduring and unfailing love for all her charges. Tired beyond imagining, she looked straight into my eyes and said: 'As much as I love my birds, they in turn, love me. And in that shared love I am fulfilled.'" - John Morris, Onaway's Founder Trustee.

The Onaway Trust is a registered charity - number 268448.