And another group of engineering students from Southern has expressed an interest in volunteering next weekend. This isn’t confirmed yet, but it’s looking promising. Mercer’s Student Affairs adviser also seems to think some of that college’s students  might  be interested, so…fingers crossed!

The screech owl with issues, well, still has issues. She still steadfastly refuses to self-feed, which isn’t boding well for her future. Nothing piques her interest, and the only way I can get food in her is to force-feed, which isn’t pleasant for either of us—to say nothing of the added stress it causes her. I’ve held off making any final decisions until after her follow-up worming, which was last night, but I’m not hopeful, quite frankly. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have to make tough calls. This looks like it’s gonna be one of those tough calls.

Late Thursday night, a call came in about another screech owl, found in the road in a neighboring county. Because the weather was predicted to be really nasty Friday, we opted to meet Thursday night. Upon intake this little screech, a male, was feisty when handled but obviously concussed, and the misshapen left pupil was worrisome. It looked as if he might have a luxated lens which, if you’ll recall, is when the lens is actually ripped loose from its “mooring” within the eyeball. There were no other injuries, though.

By Friday morning the pupil looked better, and little Mr. I’ll-kick-your-butt had eaten everything I’d offered him the previous night. Because he probably has a mate, possibly already on the nest, time is of the essence here, but the eye still didn’t look quite right…

This morning when I went to change his paper and feed him, the eye looked normal and, as you can see in the short clips below, he was in rare fightin’ form, so I’ll be calling his rescuers tomorrow to get him back out in the wild and hopefully reunited with his mate. If we’re very lucky, she wasn’t on the nest yet!

Obviously, the goal of every wildlife rehabber is to save the animals brought to him or her for care so that they can be released back into their natural habitat as soon as possible. Sometimes, however, the only release we can offer is a quick and painless death.  This frequently horrifies the public, who often don’t quite grasp that we’re not miracle workers, that there are some animals whose suffering needs to be ended immediately and that humane euthanasia is the kindest option we can offer those animals.

This was the case for an adult male great horned owl who came in last week. Fortunately, his rescuer, a DNR employee,  knew from the outset that his chances for survival were slim to none and acknowledged to me that he simply didn’t want to see the bird suffer needlessly.

The poor GHO was found near the road and allowed his rescuers to toss a blanket over him without even a token fight. For a GHO, this isn’t a good sign. He was rail-thin, with a keel (breastbone) you could cut yourself on. He had massive head trauma and a severely infected left eye, filled with blood and pus and hard as a marble. The cornea was basically one huge ulcer, with several smaller ulcers beginning to form. 

Upon intake I was pretty sure the eye was beyond help, but sometimes severe eye infections and ulcerated corneas can be treated successfully so before taking any final action, I took the GHO to Smalley’s Animal Hospital, where vet Peggy Hobby confirmed my initial assessment. Given the advanced state of the infection and ulceration in his eye, coupled with his severely depressed physical condition, any attempt to treat him would have just prolonged his agony and delayed the inevitable.  We opted to give him a quick death with dignity.

Let me explain here that rehabbers and vets don’t make these decisions lightly. We can record them and discuss them matter-of-factly, but that’s because we’ve learned to maintain some degree of clinical distance, to retain our sanity. (And I know many people use the term “clinical detachment”. I refuse to use that term; to me it implies a degree of separation from the situation that I personally don’t possess. “Clinical distance” seems more accurate: we’re a part of the situation but we have to step back and view it and act upon it from some degree of distance.) Anyone who says to you that euthanasia is something you just get used to is either a bald-faced liar or doesn’t need to be rehabbing—or perhaps both. You NEVER get used to it; if anything, as your experience and skills increase, you find it more difficult. And I can promise you, it’s not the releases we lie awake at night and toss and turn over. It’s the ones we lose that haunt us.

Lest I leave you all depressed with that philosophical treatise, however, let me offer encouraging news on the screech. She (yes, we decided based on her weight “he” is a “she”) is still not eating on her own but she is keeping down what I force-feed her.  I continued consulting other rehabbers last week, and Kathryn Dudeck of Chattahoochee Nature Center suggested that she might be egg-bound (meaning she couldn’t lay an egg). Peggy x-rayed her to see if we could see any eggs or egg fragments, but all the x-ray, obtained over the vigorous protests of the screech, showed was a distended belly.

Kathryn and I debated the possibility of parasites, which we both felt should have presented much earlier in the screech’s stay at LWR. Kathryn theorized that maybe optimum diet and stable temperatures had slowed their development, so we agreed that perhaps treatment for parasites was in order.  I’m still not seeing any worms in her poop, but I also don’t have a microscope to do a float to look for parasites too small to be seen with the naked eye.

What we do know is her poop is looking much more normal and she’s more alert and active, even if she hasn’t resumed self-feeding yet.  So at the very least, as Kathryn pointed out, there was some sort of blockage that has either resolved itself or has been resolved by the meds and fluids Madam Screech has been getting. She felt feisty enough last night to give me the stinkeye!

Finally, for those who might be wondering about flight pen progress, I’m sorry to report there is nothing to report yet. Because volunteers didn’t exactly beat down the doors when I asked for volunteer labor (I had one person offer—you know who you are, and I thank you!) and because professionals could knock both pens out in a much shorter time, I’ve been in contact with seven different contractors.  One took a copy of the plans to work up an estimate and was never heard from again. One waited two weeks to call me back and say they might be available and then never got back with me. Three never bothered to return my calls. One informed me they didn’t do small jobs like that. And the final one called yesterday to say they wouldn’t  be available to look over the site and plans until later this week. At this point I’m about ready to start digging a damn posthole or two a day and doing all the work myself, bit by bit—and it looks like it might actually come down to that, to be honest.

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.

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!

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…

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.

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…

First, though, an update on LWR’s current cast. The screech owl is self-feeding, which is cause for celebration. (On more levels than one; while it bodes well for his chances at possible release or use as an educational bird, it also means I don’t have to cut up smelly mice anymore!)

And the barred owl is still acting like a big, bad bird with his threat displays—and understand that while I say that in jest, he IS quite capable of putting display into action should he feel really threatened. As it is, he associates my entrance into the flight pen with food, so he graciously allows me to place his mice and exit unscathed. The good news for Sir Barred is that, as you can see in the photo and video below, he’s holding both wings perfectly level when he puffs up in threat. This, coupled with his movement around the flight pen, would seem to indicate that the fracture and dislocation won’t impede his release. More cause for celebration!

Of course, it’s almost never all good news in wildlife rehab. Last week LWR received a male cardinal who was found in the bushes with his feathers all mussed and incapable of flight. He was alert and aggressive when he came in, and the finder indicated that there was no window near where he was found. Although there were no apparent injuries, I started him on antibiotics, just in case we had a cat-attack victim.

By late evening he had perked up considerably and was eating well, so I was hopeful that we could plan a quick release for this colorful guy. Unfortunately, he died during the night. As I’ve said before and will likely say many times this year, as well, it’s extremely frustrating when a bird is doing well and seems to be a good candidate for release, and then it drops dead for no apparent reason.

We never know the full story on our intakes unless the finder actually saw the bird hit by a car or attacked by a cat or narrowly avoid being lunch for a raptor—and it’s rare indeed to have an eyewitness account. Most often, finders see the birds after the injury has occurred, so they really can’t state with certainty what happened, nor can we as rehabbers, although we certainly do like to guess.

Now, I’d like to offer you some New Year’s resolutions you can make to help wildlife. Some of them you may already even be practicing, so this should be an easy set of resolutions to keep!

1.      Keep your cats indoors—this is safer for both wildlife AND cats. Indoor cats won’t attack birds, squirrels or rabbits, and they won’t run the risk of attack themselves by larger predators, disease or injury from fighting, or being run over. It’s a win-win situation.

2.      Avoid the use of pesticides, insecticides, and rodenticides. Insecticides and pesticides on your plants kill bird food (insects). If the birds eat the poisoned insects, they die. If they feed poisoned insects to their babies in the nest, the babies die. They also get on the birds’ skin/feathers and are ingested when they preen, resulting in death. Further, the chemicals can rub off the adult birds’ skin/feathers onto the nestlings and kill them. As for rodenticides, while you may think they’re a great way to control mice and rats, let me again point out that they have unintended victims. Poisoned rodents are eaten by raptors, who then succumb to the same poisons that killed the rodents. Also, domestic pets and children have been known to eat the rodenticides, with disastrous results.

3.      Create a wildlife haven in your yard. It’s not difficult: a few feeders for the types of birds you want to attract (and clean the feeders regularly); water sources (changed daily to avoid breeding mosquitoes) that can be as simple as a few shallow dishes set on the ground or on picnic tables; brush piles/shrubs in a corner of the yard to provide cover and potential nesting spots for birds and small mammals; a small plot “ignored” by the lawn mower and perhaps even planted with native-to-your-region wildflowers and shrubs; leave snags (dead trees) for cavity nesters such as bluebirds, flying squirrels, woodpeckers and screech owls; put up nest boxes for bluebirds, screech owls, barn owls and other species that will readily use them.

4.      No tree trimming or felling from March-September. Actually, I’d say there’s really no good time to trim/fell trees, as March to September is prime songbird nesting season, but owls have eggs/babies in the nest as early as January/February, and it’s not uncommon for squirrels to have babies in their nests by mid to late February and again throughout the fall, beginning as early as August and running through November. So at the very least, check the tree very carefully if it absolutely must be trimmed/felled.

5.      Learn the name and contact number of your local wildlife rehabber. Share it with friends and relatives. Hope you never need it, but have it handy in case you do. In this day and age, there’s no reason not to just go ahead and program it into your phone!

6.      Donate to your local rehabber. Remember that rehabbers receive no state or federal funding, so consider a monthly donation. Every little bit helps!

7.      Get outside more often and become aware of your environment, especially your own yard. Learn what species are normal for your yard. Get a good bird guide (I’m fond of Sibley’s) and learn to identify the birds you see most frequently. You’d be surprised how many people can’t identify common back yard birds like mockers, cardinals, wrens, titmice, chickadees and blue jays. Go outside at night and listen for the night birds that you may never actually see, like the various species of owls and nighthawks—and even nocturnal mammals like flying squirrels that you’re more likely to hear than see. Your yard is its own little world; become familiar with it!