Nothing is much more satisfying than volunteers releasing wild animals they've helped nurse back to health successfully back into their native environments.
I didn't work with birds. Other than owls, I am not a giant fan of birds, and The Marine Mammal Center is were where I spent my wild animal volunteer time. Folks would sign-up independently of their normal shifts feeding, cleaning, and medicating sick baby seals to see the individuals they had formed a notional bond with, when they were released.
A ton of effort was kept to NOT form any sort of connection to these animals, or for them to be come comfortable around human-kind. Keeping the wild animals wild is a big part of their rehabilitation, so mostly you hid behind a plywood scutum as you scraped shit off of walls.
