Wildlife rehabilitator Elizabeth Conley, of Babylon, dies at 84

Licensed wildlife rehabilitator Elizabeth “Betty” Conley nicknamed herself “MamaDuck,” but she mothered more than waterfowl, family and friends said.

She started editing the works of LGBTQ authors decades ago at a time when society ignored them. She ministered to her parents and her husband as they neared the end of their lives. Her care of animals was so good that Gabby, a member of the call duck species, lived with her for 22 years, way beyond a duck’s average life span.

“She had a love of life and just had a beautiful spirit about her,” said her cousin, Donna Murphy Turner, of Southern Pines, North Carolina. “You always felt welcome. She gave us all a greater appreciation of life, of love, of beauty and nature.”

Conley, who spent her last years enjoying the birds in the inlet and trees outside her kitchen window, died July 23 due to complications from a heart procedure in June. The Babylon resident was 84.

As a child, she helped her mother feed ducks in the waters by their home, her family said.

As a parent, she presided over a household of animal rescues and animal lovers, with key support from her husband, Karl Patrick Conley, a Suffolk County police officer who founded his department’s K-9 section in the 1960s.

The couple’s connection was “instantaneous” when they met as teenagers during a dance hosted by their Catholic schools, then eloped as college students two years later in 1959, said her daughter, Kathleen Conley, of Silver Spring, Maryland. They had three children born over the course of two and a half years, she said.

“They were always in sync on what to do and when,” the daughter said.

Elizabeth Conley got a license as a veterinary technician in the 1980s, leaving the field a few years later to focus on wildlife. Treating animals from her home for about 35 years, she specialized in water birds but responded to various calls, including an eagle stuck on tar on a roof, her family said.

Her house was a haven where songbirds, squirrels, geese, seagulls, ducks and other animals recovered. Most of the waterfowl stayed in the garage or outside pens and splashed in a heated, in-ground pond, but visitors might see a duck in the bathtub or mistake a kitchen bowl of duck pellets as human food.

“She did recognize the different personalities between the ducks so that was pretty funny,” Kathleen Conley recounted. “In the winter, she’d be out there feeding them in the pens, changing their water, making sure there’s no ice so they could drink and swim.

“A lot of the baby geese and ducks she had raised, that had lost their mothers … would come back every single year. They would actually walk up to us.”

Family and friends also admired Elizabeth Conley as a self-taught woman, especially in the arts. She painted her patients, including garden scenes with ducks and songbirds, on the walls of her home. If her knitted and crocheted sweaters and gifts weren’t perfect, she would redo them. She kept the Christmas tree up year-round, decorating for various holidays and seasons.

Well-read, she held online chats with LGBTQ authors at a time when chats were a new phenomenon. She also wrote and edited the Beakly News, a newsletter for birders.

Conley loved going on birding trips, but in later years, as her health made getting around difficult, longtime friend Lynn Simmons, of Babylon, would stop by most Fridays for lunch. The birder would easily identify all the birds spotted outside from the kitchen table, and Simmons would share her travel tales to her interested audience.

“Not only would she read my journal entries, but she would be interested in where I’d been and what I’d done and what I’ve seen,” Simmons said. “Not everybody does that. She was a wonderful listener.”

Besides her daughter, Elizabeth Conley is also survived by sons, Karl Conley Jr., of East Islip, and John Conley, of West Babylon.

Elizabeth Conley never wanted people to be sad, her daughter said, so instead of a wake and service, a celebration of her life will be held this month, followed by a private burial next to her late husband in the fall.