John Di Leonardo, executive director of Humane Long Island, an animal advocacy group, and a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, sometimes rescues abandoned or escaped birds, or receives them from markets as a good-will gesture.

“Every single bird we get is deathly ill, has necrotic wounds, respiratory infections, staph infection — just, you name it, they have it,” he said. Many die soon after he receives them.

Read more in The New York Times