​Yep, one more barred owl came in this afternoon, brought by a local game warden after being found in the road last night. Remarkably, nothing seems broken but his right eye is cloudy and he doesn’t wanna keep either eye open. He’s still very woozy and weak, and honestly, I’m guessing there may be internal injuries given his general level of lethargy. We’ll see what the morning brings…

​The other two barreds look great and will be moving from the mini-pen to the raptor flight this week.

​The flyers are still in that “pee on everything” phase that accompanies their eyes opening, so they require swabbing down with a damp cloth at every feeding, meaning they’re seldom not at least a little damp, either from being swabbed down or peeing on each other, and remain on low heat to compensate. The good news is that they’re starting to really chow down on the blueberries so within another week or so they should have the hang of peeing in the corner of their box and not all over each other. They’re also in constant motion when their box is open, making photos a challenge.  It’s a work in progress…

​And Sisyphus the kestrel remains a pissy little fellow, footing and biting the fool outta me every time I change his paper. Maybe his name shoulda been Pissyphus? Gotta love a kestrel’s outsized ego!

​And that, folks, is it for this week. Sorry I’m not chattier or more profound, but I appear to have some sort of low-grade infection or sinus/allergy thingy goin’ on. I’m normally quite hot-natured but today if I set the heat any higher in my end of the house, Satan himself is gonna consider relocating Hell…

Y’all know how I love my flyers. Well, last Sunday evening a call came in about three baby flyers whose nest had been destroyed. Hunters somehow backed into the rotten snag Mama Flyer had her nest in, totally destroying the nest. Despite being told that flyers, unlike grays, don’t have multiple nests to move their  babies to, the hunters decided to finish up their hunt before retrieving the babies from the ground where they’d landed. When they came back, they found the poor mama on the ground trying to cover her babies with her own body—I don’t know about y’all, but that mental image just hurts my heart…

The trio of stressed babies, two males and a female, arrived shortly afterward. They were about four weeks old on intake, and one of the poor little males was so stressed he literally screamed—something flyers almost NEVER do.
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After the first couple of feedings they settled down nicely and continue to do well. Their little eyes are beginning to open as of yesterday. I seldom name rehabs slated for release but we do need nicknames for multiples of the same species, so these sibs are Bubba 1, Bubba 2 and Sissy. And is the case with all flyers, they’re utterly adorable.

The red tail who appeared to’ve auditioned for Cirque du Soleil was transferred to Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends, who reports that he’s eating quite well and flying beautifully now—he’d just started navigating the LWR raptor flight from end to end before his transfer.

The barred owl with the slightly impaired vision remains in the mini-pen, along with the barred recovering from the wing fracture. He was going stir-crazy inside so the mini-pen seemed like a good transition as we wait for the callus on the wing to strengthen a bit more. I totally forgot to get photos of them last week; sorry…
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A third barred came in last week with a nasty open fracture; one end of the bone was already black. He was euthanized.

​And Sisyphus the kestrel continues to be a fierce, foul-mouthed little cuss. I’ve been trying for a few weeks now to catch him screaming invectives at me as I changed his paper and finally managed last week. See what I mean about language that would make a sailor blush?!

Last week started with a bang, figuratively speaking, with four—yes, FOUR—birds requiring vet visits on Monday. Three were follow-up x-rays; one was a late Sunday arrival.

Let’s start with that Sunday night arrival, shall we? Just before dark Sunday, LWR received a call about a red tail hawk found by the roadside—seldom a good scenario. The finder arrived about 9:30 with a bird he thought might already be dead, as he was “stiff on one side.”

I picked up the red tail and sure enough, his right side was positively rigid. Something felt wrong. Something looked wrong. As I continued to examine the bird, it became apparent that his right leg was quite literally up to the hip flung over and lodged against his right shoulder—his wing and leg were reversed in position.

Ever heard the expression “ass over teakettle”? Yeah, well, this poor bird was the living personification of that expression.
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After several minutes of gentle manipulation, I managed to get his leg and wing back into their proper positions. As hard as it was to believe, nothing seemed broken, but the poor fellow was concussed and did NOT want to stand; he propped against the corner of the box.

​Monday we x-rayed that bird fifteen ways from Sunday to make sure nothing was broken. Nope. Nothing. But he still didn’t wanna stand. Of course, as vet Peggy Hobby and I agreed, if we’d been in that contorted position, we wouldn’t wanna stand, either. Peggy prescribed a couple of steroid injections a few days apart.

​By Tuesday morning he was standing and would eat if I hand-fed him but wouldn’t touch his food otherwise.

​By Thursday he was self-feeding, and today he’s in the raptor flight, as he was getting restive in his box inside. In a couple of days he’s gonna be transferred to Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends for continued care, as I need the raptor flight for a barred owl who came in Monday afternoon.

​But first, let’s discuss the barred owl I’ve not managed to get any photos of since his intake a month ago because he lunges at the camera lens. He’s not quite ready for the raptor flight yet; his x-ray showed a lovely callus forming but it’s not healed enough just yet. He has another couple of weeks of cage rest.

​Now, as to the other barred: he came in with huge chunk of dried blood next to his beak and a milky left eye. He’s groomed out most of the blood and has at least limited vision in that eye—he can find a white rat on a white puppy pad. Nothing is broken, so he’s in the mini-pen as of today and will go to the raptor flight as soon as the red tail goes to Steve.

​All news wasn’t good, of course—that almost never happens. The screech’s follow-up x-ray showed a total non-union fracture; if anything, it was even more dislocated than it had been initially. He was euthanized.

​Sisyphus the kestrel’s follow-up x-ray looks promising, although what I’d initially said was a ding or a hotspot actually appeared on the x-ray to be where a small sliver of bone poked through. We still think he has a good chance at being an ed bird, though, so in another few weeks we’ll do another follow-up to see where things stand at that point.

​The cat-attacked possum was released and seemed more interested in growling and posturing at the camera than waddling off to safety. I walked away for a few minutes and once the perceived threat was gone, he ambled into the brush and was nowhere to be seen when I came back to check.

​Next week’s update will be on Monday, Oct. 28.

As most of y’all know, I adore possums but seldom take them in because they almost never arrive one or two at a time; it’s usually seven or eight, and always during baby season, when seven or eight possums in addition to upwards of 25 birds, most of whom require feeding at least every half hour is, well, more than one person can handle and do right by all involved.

So when the call came today about a SINGLE possum found in a bucket and possibly cat-attacked, I was quite willing to take the hissy little fellow, as he’s old enough to self-feed and really only needs a round of antibiotics to ward off any possible ill effects from the surmised cat attack.
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He’s stressed, of course, and crazy-hissy, showing off those 50 teeth—yeah, possums have 50 teeth—in what would be an impressive threat display if he were bigger. As it is, I just laugh at the rascal.

As a reminder, possums are not rabies-prone; their core body temp is too low. They also eat slugs, snails, roaches, the ticks that cause Lyme disease, frogs, small rodents and snakes…and they’re immune to rattlesnake venom.  So yeah, possums are EXCELLENT natural pest control.

They have opposable thumbs on their back feet, while their front toes are all evenly sized. Their eyesight is pathetically bad; they’d be classified as legally blind if they were humans. Their sensitive noses compensate for their bad eyesight, though. They use their prehensile tail NOT to hang from tree branches—at least, not as adults; the babies sometimes will—but as an extra “hand” to drag nesting material around.

​Their main defense mechanisms include “grinning” to show off those aforementioned teeth, hence “grinning like a possum,” and literally fainting and feigning death, hence “playing possum.” When playing dead, they’ll sometimes drool, leading people and other potential predators to think they’re rabid when in actuality, I believe there’s been like one case of rabies reported in possums in the past hundred years.  You and I are more likely to have rabies than a possum. They can also emit a foul-smelling discharge from their anus, making them smell dead and thus unappetizing to potential predators.

They’re also North America’s only native marsupial, meaning the female carries and nurses the babies in her pouch. Newborn possums are about the size of a bee; up to 20 may pass through the birth canal but Mama Possum only has 13 nipples, not all of which produce milk, so after 13 babies have latched onto those nipples, almost vacuum-sealing their still poorly-formed mouths to them, the remaining babies are just out of luck…as are the ones on a non-productive nipple. There the survivors remain, locked to a nipple, as it were, for about two and a half months; then they cling to Mama’s back as she forages for food—and if any fall off, oh well…Possums don’t have a strong maternal instinct.

Their lifespan is short, only about four years at the longest, and they’ve changed little in millions of years—how neat is that?!

In short, possums is neat! (Yes, I know it’s bad grammar but it sounds goofier, appropriate for goofy little critters. And if you’re wondering, my source for all this lovely trivia is my memory—it’s stuff I’ve read on possums over the years.)
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Sisyphus the kestrel, the screech and the barred all are due for follow-up x-rays this week. Sisyphus’ wing has been unwrapped for several days now, and he’s keeping it fairly level, so that’s a good sign. So fingers crossed for good outcomes for all of them.

Last week was another typical fall week, with few intakes, a couple of releases, and the three “long-termers” biding their time.
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First, the releases: both the mourning dove and house finch were released. True to predictions, the finch didn’t waste time leaving; the dove, however, did actually hang around for a day or two, so I was able to get a couple of pretty decent post-release shots of him.

Sunday’s possible Coop turned out to be a broad-wing hawk. I see so few of them I actually had to check my bird ID guides to make sure that’s what I had. They’re fairly common in Georgia; LWR just doesn’t see many of them. Upon intake, I was sure the right wing was trashed, although the “professional” who found him or had him for several days before transport—whichever—told the volunteer transporter it was a fixable break. X-rays at Smalley’s showed my assessment was correct; the wing was shattered like a jigsaw puzzle from shoulder to elbow. It was not fixable, and he was euthanized. There are times being right purely sucks.

I didn’t get photos of him before taking him to Smalley’s, but I do, of course, have his x-ray, which shows the damage to his poor wing.

Monday a barred owl came in from the game warden in a neighboring county; he’d retrieved it from someone who’d had it a week, attempting to feed it canned cat food mixed into water—supposedly on the advice of “experts” (the finder’s words) in Fort Valley. To my knowledge there are no raptor “experts” in Fort Valley, and for the record, canned cat food is NEVER appropriate for raptors. NEVER.
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His left wing felt broken in the wrist, and x-rays at Smalley’s showed it was actually his entire hand that was shattered, with no signs at all of calluses forming after a week. Given the lack of any evidence of healing and the fact that barreds are nearly impossible to place as ed birds, we opted for euthanasia. Again, I forgot to take photos of him prior to his trip to Smalley’s, so all I have is his x-ray.

And yesterday a sweet little approximately six-week-old flyer came in, the victim of a dog attack. His rescuer called LWR but I could tell from his voice he had no intention of attempting to bring the poor fellow to me, so I contacted colleagues John and Luanne Brooker, who are focusing solely on deer this year but are in the same county as the caller, and asked if they could get the flyer from the individual and to me, which they did. The rescuer and the Brookers all mentioned the little fellow biting them, which is unusual for flyers, especially babies with their eyes still closed.
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While he never offered to bite me, his intake exam revealed a broken right leg and a punctured patagium (the skin flap between their front and back legs that allows flyers to glide) just below the left elbow. I started meds, got a little food in him and put him on low heat—all SOP for flyers. 

Four hours later I went back to check on him and feed him again before heading to bed myself, and he was in that adorable position baby flyers often assume: on his back with his legs spread-eagled like a little human baby. When I opened the “nursery box,” the sound of the door clicking should have made him jump. It didn’t. I was using a red light, which is also my SOP for feeding flyers at night, so I shone it directly on him for a closer examination, and he was dead. He apparently had internal injuries. At least he just died in his sleep, so there’s that small comfort…

The barred owl recovering from a wing fracture continues to do well. He’s an aggressive little snot who lunges at the camera when I try to get photos, so no pix of him again this week. He can lunge at me all he wants but I’m not risking my camera lens!

The screech recovering from a wing fracture is also doing well and is proving a true master of the screech stinkeye.

​Sisyphus the kestrel was feeling his oats last week and decided to get vocal, so I was cussed out in kestrel loudly and repeatedly all week. While he’s still flipping on his back in defensive mode, I did manage one shot of him actually sort of standing, just before he flipped over and threatened to kill me... Honestly, this bird cracks me up. I thought screeches had attitude, but kestrels have attitude on steroids!

LWR had two releases last week, no intakes, and two more releases slated for early this week. And I’m awaiting a supposed Cooper’s hawk with a “flesh wound,” en route later this afternoon—the very term ‘flesh wound” immediately brings to mind the showdown between King Arthur and the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail; hopefully the bird’s injuries will be significantly less than the Black Knight’s were! (And if you're not familiar with Monty Python, my Lord, what kinda heathen are you?!)

The two releases were the barred owl who’d been patiently (sort of) waiting for several weeks and the red shoulder whose x-rays were perfectly clear. The red shoulder took off like a shot and I got no video or photos of him; he disappeared.

The barred owl was more cooperative; I at least managed a couple of maximum-range post-release photos of him.

The mourning dove and house finch will be released on Oct. 1, after the end of this first round of dove season. Both being adults when they came in, they’ll both likely skedaddle when the “escape hatch” is left open, so it’s doubtful I’ll manage any post-release photos of them.

The barred owl with the wing fracture is doing well and is a highly impatient patient. He wants OUT of that box; he doesn’t understand that he’s on cage rest till his wing heals.

Same for the screech, who still delights in puffing up and threatening to kill me every time his paper is changed or he’s fed. If screeches were as big and bad as they think they are, I’d never go outside at night again!

And Sisyphus the kestrel seems to be healing quite well. The place he’d opened up and plucked bald on his wrist has remained scabbed over (you can see it in both photos below, to the right), so he’s no longer picking at it, and he left the same bandage in place for most of last week. He’s off meds now and continues to eat well and show me just how fierce a little falcon can be. Honestly, I think he’s got the screech beat for dinging my hands nonstop.
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One day I’ll manage a photo of him perching; as it is now, every. dang. time. I go near him he flips on his side or back in defensive mode. I have to laugh at him, even as I’m wincing at the damage those tiny talons can inflict.

Last week was a return to more normal fall activity, with just two new intakes, both red shoulders, to add to the raptor mix.
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First, though, the results of the screech x-rays: his wing is well and truly broken. It’s anybody’s guess if it will actually heal; we know it won’t heal for flight. So if, in a few weeks, the fracture has begun callusing over, we’ll worry about placing him as an ed bird. Right now, we just need to see if it’ll heal. The good news is, he’s keeping the wing level—no drooping—and his appetite is excellent. Personality? Ehhh…typical pissy screech.

​The first red shoulder to come in last week had a nasty open fracture; he was euthanized.

​The second was luckier; he only had a concussion, evidenced by the bruising on the roof of his mouth, but no fractures. He’s in the mini-pen now, awaiting release.

​The barred owl that was in the mini-pen was moved to the raptor flight to give him a chance to flex his flight muscles after two weeks in the mini-pen.

The barred recovering from the wing fracture continues to eat well; he has another couple of weeks before we re-x-ray that wing.

The house finch in the songbird flight is flying beautifully now—no signs of wobbliness at all. As I mentioned last Sunday, though, he and the mourning dove will stay put till first dove season ends.

The kestrel remains a source of amusement and bemusement. He’s about the most gorgeous little bird I’ve ever seen, and the better he feels, the pissier he gets. He’s determined to turn my hands into sieves!

He did open a small wound on the “head” of his wrist, so he remains on meds to keep it from getting infected. It’s scabbed over nicely, though, and when he rips off his wing bandage, which happens about every other day now, the wing doesn’t droop, so that’s good.
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He also continues to shred his paper daily, and every evening I remove all the shredded paper and give him fresh paper to begin shredding the next morning. Thus, he’s acquired a name: Sisyphus. And nope, I’m not explaining—if you don’t get it, look up the name and you’ll quickly understand!

​And look who visited yesterday! I’ve seen one at a time off and on over the past several weeks, but yesterday was the first time both vultures showed up at the same time in quite a while.

​So most of y’all are familiar with American kestrels (Falco sparverius) aka sparrow hawks, small falcons native to North America. What I bet a lot—probably most—of y’all don’t know is there’s a subspecies found primarily in Florida, Louisiana, eastern Texas and in the southern parts of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia—the Southeastern American kestrel (Falco sparverius paulus). See range map below, which may be outdated now; the most current info I could find no longer lists Texas or Mississippi in their range—at least, their breeding range.

The Southeastern American kestrel (hereafter SEAK, to use an unofficial subspecies abbreviation, although the “official” one is AMKE for the entire species) has the distinction of being North America’s smallest falcon, topping out at a weight of around 95g (about 3.3oz)—smaller than a mourning dove, to put it in perspective for you, and the second-smallest falcon in the world. Their population has declined by some 90% in the past 50 years or so due to habitat destruction (“loss of longleaf pine habitat and degradation of the remaining longleaf habitat due to fire suppression, and removal of old-growth trees and snags,” per Pamela Lynn Maney, Survey of Reproduction of the Southeastern American Kestrel (Falco Sparverius Paulus) in Electrical Transmission Towers in South-Central Georgia, 2006, pp. 12-13), leading them to be listed as threatened in Florida and as rare and a species of concern by the Georgia DNR. Couldn’t find anything definitive on their status in the other states, but the USFWS also considers them a species of concern. The Georgia DNR has a program to place kestrel nest boxes on utility poles along utility companies’ wooded rights-of-way but I’ve not seen any current info on its success.
 
My personal opinion is that God was having a most excellent day when He created the kestrel. They’re little works of art—little masterpieces, plain and simple.
 
So why all the info overload on SEAKs?
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LWR received a male SEAK Tuesday of last week, and he’s a beauty! He came in with a left wrist fracture; I was pretty sure it was right in the joint. X-rays on Wednesday confirmed my suspicions and also showed lead fragments. Given that dove season started in Georgia on Sept. 7, he was probably collateral damage from the “spray and pray” hunters over some dove field. Nevertheless, it IS a GSW (gunshot wound) and so it was reported to the state and feds as potential illegal activity, although everyone seems to agree with my assessment of collateral damage, i.e., non-intended consequences of sloppy hunting habits. (Although honestly and to be fair, as small as doves are, “spray and pray” is about the only hunting method available, I guess…)

The joint will freeze as it heals, meaning this gorgeous fellow will have limited to no flight capability—in other words, vet Jim Hobby of Smalley’s and I knew from the get-go that he’d be nonreleasable, but given their rare-to-threatened status, we were gonna do whatever possible to ensure this little beauty’s survival. So our goal was to minimize wing droop so that he was “aesthetically pleasing” and could be placed as an ed bird once his wing fully heals.  He’s eating quite well—he’s what colleague Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends calls a “light eater”: as long as it’s light outside, he’s eating. And it shows: from Sept. 10, day of intake, to yesterday, Sept. 14, his weight jumped from a thin but healthy 71.3g (2.5oz) to 89.8g (3.2oz). Yeah, he ain’t hurtin’ for food!
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And after some initial fussing and pulling wraps off, he’s decided the fourth version is “tol’able” and mostly leaves it alone now, which is good—the less I have to handle that wing while it’s healing, the better for him. However, he does have to sit in a cage all day using a knitted nest as a soft perch, so he alleviates his boredom by shredding the paper towels lining the cage. He’s quite good at it; I’ve debated giving him a job as a sensitive document shredder, as he’d work cheap. (JOKING, people—JOKING!)

He’s a typical small raptor, full of piss and vinegar, and convinced he’s T. Rex-size. Every morning when I freshen his paper and feed and medicate him, he flips over and foots me, and I laugh at him. “Yeah, you skeer me, little buddy!”
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As you can plainly see, I’m quite enamored of this feisty fellow and am hoping he continues to thrive and heal so we can see about his placement as an ed bird—but the most important thing right now is for that wing to heal; his future depends on that. First things first.

The SEAK was by no means the only bird LWR got in last week, just the most interesting.
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Monday a common nighthawk came in with a totally trashed wing; there was nothing to do but euthanize immediately. 

​Wednesday an adult male house finch arrived at LWR with some neurological issues. He’s self-feeding but still a bit wobbly. He’s in the songbird flight with the mourning dove from last Sunday’s update, where both will likely remain till the end of the month and the end of the first dove season. (Georgia has three separate dove seasons.)

​Thursday a gorgeous first year female red tail came in with only a swollen right elbow that I could find. Friday I took her to Smalley’s for x-rays to be sure the swelling didn’t mask a fracture. Nothing showed on the x-ray aside from the swelling originating near the elbow and going up toward the wrist but en route to Smalley's she’d plucked the feathers from her wrist, which felt cold and dampish. Vet Peggy Hobby and I examined both the wrist and elbow in detail and could find only bruising on the elbow—no explanation for the wrist plucking. We agreed a round of antibiotics would be a good idea in case there was something systemic that we were missing.

​Yesterday, however, she quite literally ripped her wrist off. I had medicated her that morning and checked on her periodically throughout the day to make sure she was eating, and about time for her evening meds, I walked over to see a mass of feathers in the bottom of the box. A closer look revealed it was part of her wrist. There was no option but euthanasia at that point—and still no explanation as to WHY she mutilated herself so badly. There was no pus, no infected smell…the best we can figure is she had some sort of severe nerve issue going on in that wrist—severe enough that self-amputation seemed to her to be the only solution.

​As I mentioned earlier, in the SEAK lect—ummm, discussion, it’s dove season, and we had hunters a bit closer than we liked to our property line so yesterday my nephew and I rode around the area of the property where they were hunting—a corn field just over the fence from our land. While making sure they stayed on their land, we found one dead mourning dove and an injured one on our side. The injured one surprised me by surviving the night. Both wings were shot, through and through on both, and although I don’t think so, there may be pellets in the body. While both wings are broken, neither is near a joint so the poor bird might yet survive this dove season and be able to fly again. We’ll see…

​And late yesterday, an adult male Eastern screech owl, gray phase, came in. The finder said he heard a thump while driving Thursday night but didn’t see anything in the road behind his vehicle, so he didn’t think about it again until he got back home yesterday and his dog went crazy around the front of his car. When he looked to see what had the dog so riled up, he found the screech hung either in the grille or the bumper; I honestly don’t remember which he said. He has a fracture in or near his right shoulder; we’ll get x-rays next week to determine the extent of the damage. Meanwhile, he’s giving me full-on threat displays and stinkeye when I check on him and seems to have a good appetite.

​The barred owl in the mini-pen is ready to go and still here only because I just haven’t had time to release it; the barred that came in last weekend and needed x-rays did have a fractured ulna but it’s not right in the joint so we’re gonna give him a month to heal and see what happens.

While most folks were enjoying a quiet (or festive) Labor Day, LWR was receiving birds—three for the day. Then the pace slacked off the rest of the week, with only one additional arrival.
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First, I’m happy to report the barred owl I suspected might have vision impairment last week does NOT. He can see just fine and would have been released last week but for lingering uncertainty about Dorian’s path till late in the week. So he’s slated for release this week.

One of Labor Day’s three arrivals was a juvenile male cardinal, just going through his juvenal molt. (Yes, this is the correct term: juvenile birds experience juvenal molts—although there’s a growing trend not to use the word. But I like it. So there.) He’d been found in a swimming pool and was missing tail feathers but seemed alert and spunky, so I started meds and honestly thought he’d be an eventual release.
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He was dead the next morning—whether from internal injuries or chlorinated water ingested while in the pool, who knows?

​Next up was a barred owl whose wings were fine, although his right shoulder seemed swollen. The bigger issue, though, was his inability to stand or use his legs and feet at all. He showed no neural response, but I was hopeful maybe a little steroids would bring down any inflammation that might be causing the non-response. And the next morning he did actually flex his feet and wrap them around my fingers—progress! Alas, that was the last of his progress. I gave him another 48 hours, and he remained unable to stand. He was euthanized.

​Finishing out the day was an adult mourning dove with a wing fracture who’d been kept for about a week by an elderly woman who didn’t drive. A neighbor found out and volunteered to bring the bird to LWR. The wing had already begun healing—avian fractures begin calcifying quickly—but despite a pronounced wing droop, the dove could move the wing fairly freely and strongly. After an additional week of cage rest, he was placed in the songbird flight yesterday, where he’s actually doing better than I expected, to be honest. He may be releasable in another couple of weeks; we’ll see.

​And then the rest of the week passed with no intakes until Friday, when a barred owl with a broken wing came in. His fracture is at/near the wrist, and we’re awaiting X-rays this week to see if it’s fixable. My gut says not, but I can’t tell with certainty if the fracture is in the joint or just really close to it, so…we’ll wait and see.

It’s all about balance, right? Send a few back into the wild, and a few more come in to replace the releases…Still, I’d say baby season’s officially over and now the migrating birds will start trickling in.

The mockers flew the coop without a backward glance—or a photo. They were so ready to get out they didn’t even wait an hour after the escape hatch was opened before taking their leave.
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The red tail was slightly more cooperative, with a gorgeous release flight. He was at the far end of the camera’s zoom post-release, though, and flew away when I started to move closer, so the one post-release shot is a bit grainy.

​The wood ducks are finally on their own. The oldest had been testing his wings hard the week before his release, so he showed off his skills immediately. The slightly younger three were content to swim their way to freedom.  The video quality is a bit off; I used my waterproof camera, which has less zoom and a lower image resolution. (It does great underwater, though!) That’s my three-year-old great-nephew and my mother you hear in the background; he had to see the “baby ducks” released and “quiet” is not in his vocabulary.

​And for slightly less than 24 hours, all LWR’s pens and cages were empty. But as you know, Nature abhors a vacuum and by noonish the day after all the releases, a head trauma barred owl came in. He was found near the road and was probably sideswiped by a car. He has no fractures but after placing him in the mini-pen, I’m suspecting vision impairment—not uncommon with head trauma, and it often resolves itself in a week or so. Sometimes the damage is permanent, though, so we’ll wait and see.

​And yesterday a cat-caught Carolina wren came in. Aside from a minor leg injury, he had no other outward signs of damage, but of course we started antibiotics. He was alert, inhaling mealworms like he was starving…and this morning he was dead. There were obviously internal injuries.

​Meanwhile, this exhausted rehabber is enjoying the slow period while she can. It won’t last!