The red tail nestling doesn’t even look like the same bird, and his weight will attest to his growth: he’s at 279g (9.8oz) as of this morning! Remember, his intake weight was 44.9g (1.5oz). He’s more alert and active and even started tucking his head—sometimes— to sleep last week!

So again, y’all’re just gonna have to tolerate a photo overload of this gorgeous downy red tail before we move into anything further from last week. (Hey, I did take pity on y’all—you’re only getting a few of the over 300 photos—from last week alone— of this not-so-wee one!)

In other news, an adult great horned came in Friday with his left eye swollen shut. Nothing is broken and the eye is clear, so it appears he just got his bell rung, but good.

The fledgling great horneds are good to go; we lost one last week when he apparently flew into the back of the flight and broke his back. That would appear to be the most plausible scenario, given that he was well-fleshed, alert and aggressive that morning and lying spreadeagled and dead on the ground that evening. And yes, it sucks, but birds sometimes do stupid stuff...

The red shoulder is ready to be in a flight as soon as one opens up. Yeah, that’s pretty much the same pose he’s offered every week for the past month...

The barred owls are also ready for a flight, again as soon as one opens up. They’ve also grown like little weeds!

And this afternoon an osprey, most likely a late hatch last year given that his feet and legs are still blue-tinged, came in with a left wing injury. The tissue around it is still too swollen to be able to determine if it’s actually a fracture, but the swelling is mid-bone, so that’s promising, at least.

Every rehabber has his or her favorite critter to rehab, and raptor rehabbers are certainly no exception. As most of y’all should know by now, my personal favorites are red tails and screeches, neither of which have been frequent guests at the LWR B&B lately.

But at the moment, this rehabber is in hog heaven (look it up if you’ve never heard the expression) with a less-than-week-old downy red tail. Oh baby, indeed!

Monday afternoon game warden Rodney Horne texted a photo of a tiny downy raptor, asking for tentative ID and making sure the inn had room. He followed up with a call to provide further info. Seems landowners saw the tree the nest was in fall, and the nest itself, in their words, “exploded” when it hit the ground. They rushed over to see if anything had been in the nest and found two tiny babies, one dead from the impact and the wee one Rodney was calling about, and contacted him for help.

Upon arrival, the wee one was obviously VERY wee—still had his egg tooth and weighed 44.9g (1.5 oz)—approximate hatch weight for baby red tails, although his down color threw me off and I actually called colleague Kathryn Dudeck at Chattahoochee Nature Center to see if she’d ever seen a downy hawk whose down was a dirty gray. For a few panicked moments we both feared the baby was our national bird (whose name I don’t utter for fear of jinxing myself), but research on both our parts led to the relieved conclusion that my first guess had been right—this was a baby red tail, probably only 24 hours old.

Baby has, in the six days since his intake, gained 60g; as of this morning, he topped the scales at 104.9g (3.7 oz).
And now, before we move to the remainder of the update, enjoy the gloriousness that is a baby red tail...

In other news, the adult barred owl was released, and the teen who found him, brought him to LWR and picked up back up for release kindly sent a video of the release.

With the main flight vacated, the great horneds moved into larger digs.

The sharpie then went into the mini-pen, from which he was released yesterday. I allowed a self-release for him, propping the door open and letting him choose when he was ready to go. Within an hour, he’d flown the coop. The photo below is from before he regained his freedom.

The red shoulder is likely to be the next occupant of the mini-pen, as soon as his wing has had time to fully heal.

The pre-Easter baby barreds have a while yet before they can be moved outside, but look at the progress they’ve made in the 18 days since their intake!

And yet it is...just days before Easter these tiny barred owl nestlings came in after the snag they were in was cut down. Look at those sweet little downy babies!

And here they are a week later...

They grow like weeds!

The great horned branchers are in the mini-pen awaiting the adult barred owl’s release so they can move into larger digs.

The adult barred is good to go and his finder is aiming at picking him up this afternoon for release back where he found him. We have a week-long window of low/no rain predictions, after a week of rain every other day, so the timing is perfect for his release.

The sharpie will move into the mini-pen once the great horneds have vacated it.

And the red shoulder still has a few weeks before we can even consider moving him into a flight. His wing fracture hasn’t had time yet to heal.

Only one intake last week, balanced with one release—which was a nice break after the previous week’s great horned influx.

The intake was an adult red shoulder with a wing fracture. He was brought to a falconer, who took him to his vet for x-rays and then alerted LWR, sending the x-rays with the bird. The wing has a fair chance of healing for flight, but he needs to eat consistently, at the moment, his eating habits are all over the place—ravenous one day and then not touching food for two days...we’ll see...

The barred owl who’d been at LWR the longest was released. Again, the camera was perfectly focused on the bird and then decided to go all abstract mid-release.

The second, more recent, barred is now in the main flight; he has some soft tissue damage but his flight has improved over the past week. As with the just-released barred, he just needs time. In the photo below, you get a side view of the tail-end of a threat display. His wing isn't drooping; it had been spread out to make him look bigger and intimidate his perceived enemy--in this case, me.

The sharpie has graduated to a perch in his box now that I’m (relatively) sure he’s not gonna do anything stupid to screw up his healing wing.

And the great horneds continue to grow apace. This photo was while their main box was being cleaned. They were NOT happy campers—oh, the hissing and beak-clicking that ensued! They’re about a week away from going into the mini-pen.

There will be no update next Sunday, April 9; I’ll be spending Easter Sunday with my family.