A “crashing” Fourth

Hope y’all enjoyed last week’s  break from updates and your Fourth of July celebrations. Here at LWR, the Fourth was spent backing up files from a crashing computer; luckily all files were saved.

We had only one new intake in the past couple of weeks, an adult Mississippi kite (MIKI). I cringe when adult MIKIs come in, as 99.9% of the time they have fatal injuries…and this time was no exception to the rule. This gorgeous bird had an open wing fracture right at the left shoulder. He was humanely euthanized.

In more upbeat news, all three barreds were released. No video, as they all flew in separate directions from the single box they were in, but I did manage a few photos—not great, because they were at the limit of my camera’s zoom when they landed, but decent enough given their distance in the woods!

And in even better news, the red shoulder raised from tiny hatchling to gorgeous young adult is, as of yesterday, with the falconer who will spend the next couple of years partnering with him as he learns to hunt and improves his survival chances from about 50% to over 95%. She was thrilled with his overall physical condition and personality, so I think theirs will be a beautiful and beneficial partnership for both parties.

And that leaves LWR, for the moment, with no birds in care…in July. That is truly weird. Colleague Steve Hicks and I were talking about this toward the end of last week and we both feel that the avian flu outbreaks of the past couple of years have taken a heavy toll on our raptors, one that will take years for the populations to recover from. We’re both hoping we’re wrong—this is one case where we’d be delighted to be wrong—but our experiences thus far (we both live in rural areas) would indicate otherwise.