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A mixed bag—so what else is new?

1/11/2015

14 Comments

 
Wildlife rehab can provide breathtaking highs, heartbreaking lows and nail-biting frustration, all in the same week—often all in the same day. This was one of the weeks where all three occurred throughout the week.

Leading with the good news (in direct violation of the media adage “if it bleeds it leads”), the barred owl with what should have been life-ending wing injuries was successfully released.  To be perfectly honest, I figured I’d end up chasing him along the ground to recapture him but wanted to give him the chance at release. To my delighted surprise, he flew fast, straight and smooth!

The attitudinal little snot somehow managed within the confines of his transport box to STILL find room to bow up in threat at me.
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When I gloved up and got him out, he clicked and fluffed up, and then suddenly realized he was “free at last, free at last” and wasted no time getting out of Dodge, so to speak.
Branches were blocking a good view of his face once he landed, so I moved closer to get an unobstructed shot. He bowed up and prepared to launch himself again. In the photos below you can see him gathering for flight away from me; in the very short and mostly very blurry video, you can see him in flight and landing a goodly distance away. With at least a couple of decent shots and one good and one crappy video of him in flight, I opted to leave Mr. Attitude in peace!
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The source of frustration is the screech. He was moved to a larger indoor enclosure this past week and initially did great. I happily watched him pounce on his food the first night he was in the larger pen. Then he stopped eating altogether.  It’s not unusual for raptors to go several days without food in the wild, and sometimes in captivity they’ll just get full and stop eating for a day or three, so I didn’t initially worry, but he’s still refusing to eat.  Force-feeding doesn’t work; he spits it back out. His weight is still good but it’s beginning to drop. He’s still alert; his mouth and throat are clear. He fought me when I tried to move him back to the smaller box, thinking that might be the issue.  Using white mice instead of black ones, with the idea that his impaired vision might make it difficult to see the darker ones, hasn’t helped.  Consults with other rehabbers have yielded nothing that I haven’t already tried…so…for the moment we’re doing fluids, which he will at least accept, to avoid dehydration—and hoping he starts eating, or at least keeping down what he’s force-fed…
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And the heartbreaker was this adult male barred owl found in a couple’s back yard with his eyes swollen shut and blood all over his beak.  These folks did everything right. After they found him late at night, they confined him in a box in a dark, quiet room. The next morning they called LWR and explained that it would be that evening before they could get the owl to me since they had to work. That evening, they brought the owl.

My initial assessment was that the eyes might be ruptured and that the fluids crusting them shut were the aqueous or vitreous humour from inside the eyeball itself. I could barely pry the eyelids apart to check. In addition to the damage to the eyes and beak, the bird was rail-thin and his bedraggled tail feathers indicated he’d been down for some time before the couple found him.
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The next day, vet Richie Hatcher at Smalley’s Animal Hospital had better luck prying the owl’s eyelids apart. Surprisingly, neither eye was visibly ruptured, although Richie did agree it appeared one of the humours was leaking out. He also said the left eye had a luxated lens (the owl was hit by something hard enough to rip the lens loose, so that it was floating unattached in the eyeball). During the night the poor fellow had bled all down his breast feathers—yeah, nearly 48 hours after he was found, he was still actively bleeding. Once Richie managed to get all the congealing blood off the owl’s beak, we could see that he was bleeding from one nostril. The inside of his beak was bruised and bleeding, and it appeared some of the humour from the eye might be draining through the sinus cavity into the mouth.

During all this, the owl was quiet and unresisting. That just ain’t normal for a barred owl. After discussing his chances of survival, Richie and I agreed they weren’t good and opted for euthanasia. Because he likely had a mate on eggs or maybe even young nestlings, this was a heartbreaking call, but given the fact that he’d already been down for quite a while, we figured if the female had already had to leave the eggs unattended long enough to hunt to feed herself, they’d already gotten too chilled to be viable; if she had nestlings, they also had probably gotten chilled and died. So this poor guy’s initial injuries probably condemned a nest of eggs/hatchlings to death, as well, even before we made the call to end his suffering—and he went down quickly and quietly, which barred owls NEVER do. That was a stark indication of just how horrific his condition was…

The goal of any rehabber is to return wildlife to the wild, as quickly as possible and safe for the wildlife. During nesting season for raptors this becomes an even more vital consideration—and when injuries preclude a return to the wild, the rehabber feels the weight of losing multiple lives, because we know the death of that one bird probably resulted in the deaths of all his/her offspring for the year. And yeah, that sucks, big-time. Welcome to our world…
14 Comments
Sally/khpipwatcher
1/11/2015 07:49:17 am

Thank you so much, Vonda, for update. Am happy about "Mr. Attitude's" release and little screech is in my prayers. So sad about Mr. Barred. You're the best.

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/11/2015 07:53:38 am

Thanks Sally!

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Ann Feldman
1/11/2015 08:53:27 am

Wonderful news about the first Barred! Hope the Screech recovers from whatever is bothering him. I always think of youngsters when a raptor is recovered or dies in breeding season. Perhaps he did not have a mate or little ones. In any event, this is life, whatever that means...it's never easy.

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/11/2015 09:23:09 am

Thanks Ann, I hope we can figure out what's ailing the little guy, too. I really hope the euthanized barred didn't have a mate on eggs or hatchlings...You're right, though, life's never easy.

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Anne Golden
1/11/2015 09:42:55 am

Vonda, you are the best. Ann F is right that it's never easy, but sometimes there is a reward. And sometimes not, and then it's really hard; but you (and we through you) live for the good times, which the first barred owl most grudgingly and ungraciously provided. Thank you.

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/11/2015 09:51:19 am

LOL, Anne, he was most definitely grudging and ungracious--thanks for that laugh!

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dmortii
1/11/2015 09:57:33 am

Very sad. I have a question . When You release a bird afterkerping it for a month or so. Do they look for their original territory or do they search for a new one. Do they look for their family so to speak?

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/11/2015 12:05:17 pm

Thanks dm. The preferred option is to release an adult bird as close to his/her original territory as possible. Sometimes, for various reasons--for instance, if the bird has come from a highly industrialized and therefore unsafe area--an alternate site is found. This bird was released a few miles from where he was found.

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Pipette
1/11/2015 12:26:05 pm

This week's post does really give all your readers a good idea of the emotional (not to mention the other) cost of being a rehabber.

The creatures that get care from you don't know how lucky they are (and I guess Mr. Attitude in particular doesn't know how lucky HE is, though I expect his 'tude will serve him well in the wild!).

Thanks for all you do, and for sharing the highs and the lows; you tell it like it is, and I certainly appreciate that. Your posts are an education for people like me who are in an urban environment, because last time I put out bird seed in the winter, the next morning I looked out my window to see multiple large RATS feeding on the stuff. (End of my bird feeding attempts, sorry to say.)

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/11/2015 12:35:56 pm

Thanks Pipette, and I can't say I blame you for not feeding birds if you had rats the last time. Only way to avoid that is to bring in the feeders at night, and even then if the rats smell the food they'll be out in broad daylight after it. They're brazen vermin...

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Suzie Gilbert link
1/12/2015 02:14:09 am

Great, great post Vonda - welcome to the roller coaster. Congrats on that snotty barred (I loved the video - I forget how in your face they can be, I tend to think of them as pacifists compared to GHOs) fingers crossed on the screechy and I'm so sorry about the second barred. I think rehabbers should all get an annual spa week courtesy of the government, since everyone through hell and high water for supposedly protected species.

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/12/2015 02:45:48 am

Thanks Suzie! Yeah, barreds are pretty tough little cusses. I actually have less attitude from GHOs, as a rule! The screech remains the same at the moment; we'll see...And yeah, the second barred was a mess, poor thing. But it's always nice to have finders who instinctively do the right thing, as that couple did. Oh, I'd settle for a spa weekend--wouldn't that be lovely?!

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Regina Harrison
1/14/2015 05:30:38 am

I'm a birder who has been reading your website for a while but who hasn't previously commented--your mention that the barred owl was still bleeding over the course of 48 hours made me think of a recent article in Massachusetts Wildlife magazine by Dr. Maureen Murray over at Tufts on the cumulative effects of rodenticides in raptors. I hope the same feeling that motivates people to help a bird in need right in front of them will motivate people to help birds who aren't in need yet by banning or finding alternatives to the worst of the rodenticides.

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Laurens Wildlife Rescue
1/14/2015 07:22:04 am

Hey Regina! Yes, any time there's sustained bleeding and/or seizures, rodenticide poisoning is a possibility. In this poor guy's case, though, the eye/head damage was the deciding factor. We suspected a slow bleed on the brain, leaking into the sinus cavity. I agree wholeheartedly on the issue of rodenticides. Their unintended victims far outweigh any benefits they have in rodent control.

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