Two new mockingbirds arrived, one pulled from a trash can and the other rescued from a puddle. The “puddle” mocker had other issues that meds didn’t even have time to address, as he died overnight.
The other mocker, a pre-fledgling, is doing well and is in the flight pen. It’s a bit early for him to be in the flight but his buddy, the older mocker from last week, went to the flight, so to keep the best buds together, the younger one got an early start. He’s actually been chasing crickets around, although I haven’t seen him catch any yet.
The possums continue to grow like weeds; they’re probably slated for release later this week, as they’re pretty close to release size now and, given their rapid growth rate, should reach that size by week’s end. Proper nutrition makes such a difference in growth rates!
Meanwhile, although I seldom see them all out, their little hissy faces have amused me all week, and I did catch a couple on top of the box they sometimes sleep in.
Unfortunately, someone’s free-roaming cat ripped out all her secondary feathers, and while this photo doesn’t show it, she’s since broken her primaries as well. Without the secondaries to support them, the primaries are prone to easy breakage, especially when a bird is flinging itself against the mesh of its cage, desperately trying to complete the migration it knows it should be making. So now the poor bird will be at LWR until all the feathers on that wing grow back…
The killdeer, however, has progressed to the point that he’s now in the flight. He’s not actually capable of flight yet, but since he’s self-feeding and killdeer spend a lot of time on the ground—those stiltlike legs are kind of a dead giveaway on that—he’s happier…sorta…in the flight. I guess perpetual motion is happy; he’s been nearly impossible to catch pix of. Even tracking him with the camera for video on his first day in the flight was a challenge!
The downy has opted for a soft release, happily playing in the trees near the songbird flight during the day and alighting on the flight as dusk approaches, loudly demanding to be let back into her “bedroom.” Below are pix and vids of her in inside caging, in the flight pen, and after release. She oozes perky, chatty personality!