And that’s a pretty accurate summary of the past week!

The cardinal wasted no time skedaddling when he was offered his freedom—always good!
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The Coop is bouncing off the walls—no, literally, he’s slamming himself into the sides of his box, which is another reason it’s best to house some rehab birds in cardboard boxes. In anything harder, he’d do some damage to his feathers and possibly his paranoid little Coop brain. We’ve got nasty, cold weather predicted for at least the first part of this week, though, so his little feathered butt will remain indoors for another few days.

​The barred owl and red tail are also impatient, but the red tail’s right wing still droops at the shoulder. Since x-rays week before last showed no fractures, it would appear there’s something neurological going on. Time will tell…

​The barred, of course, is a long shot. We knew that going in, with a displaced, already-attempting-to-heal wing fracture. It will be several more weeks before we can make an informed decision on his fate.

And the sole intake last week was another adult red tail, in a situation that, quite frankly, pisses me off to no end. People called on Wednesday: hawk in front yard, clear open fracture on leg. An open fracture on a leg isn’t good, but it’s not necessarily a death sentence. I tell them to box up the bird and get it to LWR, and they agree to do so. Wednesday afternoon…no bird. Wednesday night…no bird. Thursday…no bird.  Honestly, I’ve seen birds with leg fractures who couldn’t be caught because they could still fly quite well, so since there was no word to the contrary, I guessed that was what had happened: the hawk had flown away when the callers tried to catch it.

Friday, a volunteer transporter called to say a mammal rehabber (who’s terrified of me and won’t communicate with me directly—long story) in a neighboring county was going to pick up a hawk with a broken leg. Hmmmm….what are the odds?
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Another volunteer transporter picked up the bird and got it to me about dark; apparently the mammal rehabber was told the idiots with the bird had placed it in the back of their truck and fed it hot dogs for two days. When we opened the box, the hawk, a mature male red tail, had an open leg fracture, mid-bone. The exposed bones were already drying out and dying; the flesh around them was black. And he had no neurological response at all in that foot.  There was no humane option other than euthanasia. And what makes me so angry is if the callers had gotten the bird to me when they originally said they would, his suffering could have been ended two days earlier. Maybe not a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but I cringe at the thought of an animal suffering needlessly for two days because idiots think it’s neat to toss him in the truck bed and feed him hot dogs and can’t be arsed to do the right—the HUMANE—thing and get the bird to a rehabber.

All photos were taken post-euthanasia.

And before anyone asks, no, the leg could not be amputated. Federal regs clearly prohibit that, and for good reasons: first, amputating the leg would mean a nonreleasable bird—raptors in the wild need full use of both feet in order to be effective hunters—so he’d have to be placed as an ed bird somewhere. Red tails, for all their majesty, are fairly common birds, so it’s hard to place them as ed birds. Second, with all his weight on one leg, the hawk would be prone to bumblefoot—pressure sores—on his remaining foot. He’d spend the rest of his life at risk for or being treated for these sores, because he’d have no way to shift his weight from one leg/foot to the other.

And yes, I know birds survive in the wild after traumatic amputations in nature. It happens. But usually these are smaller, lighter birds, most often songbirds or smaller raptors, and it’s usually only the foot that’s missing, so they have a stump to alleviate some of the pressure on the intact foot.
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The takeaway? The usual: GET INJURED/ILL/ORPHANED WILDLIFE TO A PROPERLY PERMITTED REHABBER ASAP. DON’T WASTE TIME! If its injuries are so severe as to preclude rehab, we can at least offer it release from suffering in the form of humane euthanasia.

Last week felt like a preview of baby season, except all intakes were, of course, adults. Busy, busy! I suspect the brief period of decent weather we experienced had people outside more, hence the rescue of birds that otherwise might not have been found or received help.
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The first intake of the week was an adult male cardinal with a massive eye infection of some sort. Initially, based on the finder’s description, I feared “finch eye,” mycoplasmic conjunctivitis, which is highly contagious to other birds. When the cardie arrived, though, it was obvious this was some other type of infection, so I started meds immediately. Below you can see the progress he made. He’s good to go now but between rain, high winds and drastic temperature drops, his release has been delayed for a few days.

Then we had four intakes in one day—typical for baby season but very unusual for winter.
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First thing in the morning, a juvenile Cooper’s hawk came in; he’d face-planted a window, probably in hot pursuit of his songbird prey. The songbird likely veered at the last minute; the Coop hit the window, unable to swerve away as quickly as the songbird. Coops are highly maneuverable birds, but this fellow was rail-thin, so desperation likely influenced his hunt. At any rate, he went in for x-rays and while he had no wing fractures, vet Peggy Hobby and I are pretty sure we see a coracoid fracture. As you know by know, these are hard to spot even on an x-ray, so we’re not 100% positive. Doesn’t matter; a little cage rest and some time to get some meat back on those skinny bones won’t hurt him a bit—and he’s eating like there’s no tomorrow!

​Then we had a barred owl with a wing fracture that I was convinced on intake had already started healing. X-rays sort of confirmed that—the bone is displaced but attempting to form a callus, and the muscles seem to be trying to pull the bones back into alignment. There's no instability at this point, believe it or not, so we cannot realign the bone ends--they're already "set" as they are. This may not end well, but Peggy and I agreed it was worth giving the bird time to heal to see what happens.

​When the cat-attacked mocker came in, his wing felt broken at the shoulder, which x-rays confirmed. I forgot I hadn’t taken a photo of him till after we’d euthanized, so all we have for him is his x-ray, with both fractures circled.

Once again, people, repeat after me: KEEP YOUR CATS INDOORS.
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This gorgeous adult male red tail showed no signs of injury on intake, and x-rays also show nothing, but his right wing droops at the shoulder—a telltale sign of a coracoid fracture. So he’s also on cage rest. 

​And yesterday, one of my local game wardens delivered a great blue heron. Apparently the bird had been down since around Christmas but no one felt the need to contact LWR or DNR to seek help for the poor thing till he was too weak to stand. And he was starvation-thin on intake. Sometimes herons will refuse to stand when they’re stressed so I took him into the raptor flight to see if he’d try to stand. He lay on the ground glaring at me and attacked the camera, which I took as a good sign—he was still feisty. So I took him inside and mixed a thin slurry to start him eating. He kept it down but died three hours later anyway—too little, too late. He might have had a chance if he’d been brought to LWR a month ago…

​Finally, although this wacky weather might not indicate it, spring is on the way. We already have henbit and Whitlow grass blooming!

​And a postscript—bundle up tonight and get outside to watch the full lunar eclipse! It starts around 10:30pm ET and ends around 2am ET, with full eclipse around midnight. Those aren’t exact times, but they’re good enough for government work, as Daddy used to say. Even if you just pop in and out to catch “highlights” it should be worth seeing.

It appears that every weekend in Georgia this winter is gonna be wet; it’s overcast and nasty-damp today. Good sleepin’ weather for people, cats and dogs; lousy hunting and feeding weather for wildlife. The songbirds are cleaning out my feeders within hours of me filling them. Makes me worry about nesting great horned owls, as this is their breeding season…

At any rate, we don’t control the weather, so all we can do is react to it—and take advantage of the clear weather to schedule releases.

As you’ll recall from last Sunday’s update, the red shoulder found near the interstate right before Christmas was flying well in the raptor flight. By Wednesday, he was soaring from one end to the other and back without a pause, indicating his readiness for release.
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So I got him boxed up and off we headed to a suitable release site, where he bolted from the box, barely giving me time to get a not-great video of his release.

I lowered the camera and started walking toward where he landed, aiming at some post-release photos, and he let me know quickly that wasn’t gonna happen—spread those wings and took off deeper into the woods, and I lost sight of him. Now I consider that a good release!

Aside from his release, it was a quiet week. About the time I get used to occasional quiet, slow weeks, baby season will kick in, and there’ll be six months of nonstop insanity, so I’m enjoying each quiet week to the fullest.
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Besides, I still have those annual reports to get done… 

Hope everybody enjoyed their New Year’s celebrations. Now that 2018 is behind us, it’s time for rehabbers to begin working on those dreaded annual reports. Some of y’all organized types or those who have staff to help might’ve done this in “real time” throughout the year but most of us will spend January getting all the paperwork in order. Oh joy…can’t escape paperwork, can you?

As for 2019, it’s off to a fairly normal start. We had intakes right through New Year’s Eve and then a slight break before the next one, along with some releases.
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Let’s start with the releases: the barred owl was rarin’ to go and only the weeklong downpour kept him from being released much earlier. He had no fractures; the eye, while still a bit cloudy, was looking good and he could find his food, so he was a “go” waiting on the weather to cooperate.

Same for the mourning dove—while his tail feathers weren’t as long as I would’ve liked, he escaped his box three times last week as I was freshening food and water, so as soon as the skies cleared I placed him in the songbird flight and opened the escape hatch. Two hours later, I went back out to check, and sure enough, he was long gone.
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The New Year’s Eve intake wasn’t as lucky. The victim of a dog attack, this poor adult mockingbird was missing most of his right wing and his entire right leg, along with having a severely damaged left eye. He was humanely euthanized. All photos were taken post-euthanasia.

​Midweek, a juvenile turkey vulture came in. His finders’ description didn’t sound promising, and when they arrived with the poor fellow, my forebodings proved accurate. His left wing had been broken and healed very badly in the wild, at an impossible angle—the original fracture had been at or near the wrist, and the wing had healed with the wrist rotated backwards and facing up. The poor fellow would never fly again.

When his finders asked about his prognosis, I was honest. The bird would require euthanasia. Both got very emotional and said repeatedly they wished they’d never brought him and they should have kept him in a pen in their back yard, etc., etc.

Leaving aside the illegality of possessing wildlife without a permit, let me make a few observations.

First off, why on God’s green Earth would anybody think that a life in a pen would be a happy existence for a bird used to riding the thermals thousands of feet in the air? Second, that wing had to be causing massive pain still, as he had begun gnawing on the flesh of the opposite wing—what kind of life is that for a bird? Third, people need to stop viewing euthanasia as “the enemy.”  It is a TOOL in the rehabber’s kit, a means of giving wildlife the only release that is sometimes possible: a release from suffering.

And let me be clear on this: I will always, ALWAYS do what’s best for the wildlife, and if that hurts your little feelings, oh well…I’m not a licensed PEOPLE rehabber; I’m a licensed WILDLIFE rehabber. If I can’t return the wildlife to the wild and it’s not a suitable candidate—through injury or temperament—for an educational animal, I will euthanize rather than subject that animal to a lifetime of misery in a cage. I submit to you that people who think a lifetime of captivity and pain is preferable to humane euthanasia are incredibly selfish, thinking only of themselves and not the best interests of the wildlife.

Okay, off my soapbox…for this week…
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The red shoulder is in the raptor flight. He still cants his tail to the right slightly but seems to have no issues flying. This week is supposed to be gorgeous, so we’ll see how he improves and aim at possible release late this week or possibly early next week.