The red shoulder who’d been hit by a vehicle a couple of weeks ago and miraculously escaped unscathed aside from minor head trauma regained his freedom yesterday, and he was quite a happy camper about it.

He didn’t wait around after landing in that tree; as soon as he got his bearings, he was off again, so no post-release photos.

The vultures are still hanging around, but are beginning to show more independence.

And the latest from Auburn on the eagle is that he’s being treated for osteoarthritis and they plan to evaluate him for flight in another week or so. On Monday the 19th they indicated when they called LWR for some follow-up info that they were most likely going to imp the missing feathers. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means the missing feathers will be replaced; Audubon has a great introductory article on the process here: https://www.audubon.org/news/an-introduction-imping-ancient-art-feather-mending.

I’m interested to see if they’re actually able to imp, as this process does require broken feather shafts and the eagle didn’t appear to have any broken shafts and Auburn’s exam confirmed this. I guess we’ll see, huh?

Yeah, hard to believe, right? Used to be, LWR would see one eagle maybe every 4-5 years; now it seems to be multiples every year. I guess that speaks well of Georgia’s conservation efforts.

This guy—and we’re sure he’s male, given his overall smaller size and weight—was found in Jefferson County, about 2 hours away, on Wednesday afternoon and taken by DNR to an Augusta vet clinic until they could transport to LWR. DNR had statewide meetings all day Thursday, leaving no one to transport, and I had appointments I couldn’t cancel, so the transport was set up for Friday morning.

Meanwhile, I called the Augusta clinic and spoke with them concerning feeding, etc., while they had him. Upon my recommendation, they offered him both fish and roadkill squirrel, and he ate both for them Wednesday evening and Thursday. They had also weighed him at just over 7 lbs., on the low end of the scale for a male.

I also called Auburn to give them a heads-up they’d have an eagle arriving sometime Friday, and alerted Smalley’s I’d be bringing one in Friday morning, as well.

Upon his arrival at LWR Friday, he was loaded up immediately for x-rays at Smalley’s Animal Hospital. Vet Jim Hobby confirmed my initial quick intake exam with the x-rays: Nothing was broken. Further, the trunk x-rays showed NO LEAD in his body. Sadly, this is something we always check for with raptors. He was only missing most of his flight feathers on his right wing, which would have impaired his ability to fly. His keel (breastbone) was fairly well-fleshed—the breastbone itself was palpable but not badly so. In other words, he was at a pretty healthy weight but could stand to gain a few ounces.

With a clean bill of health, he left Smalley’s for LWR again, to await our stalwart volunteer transporter Joy Daniels, who arrived shortly after we got back home. We had a little back-and-forth with an ill-informed front desk staff person at Auburn, who informed me they couldn’t take the bird because their primary raptor vet was out of town—which no one mentioned on Wednesday. I then insisted they provide me a written statement to that effect to send to GA DNR and USFWS to explain why I would be holding the bird for over 48 hours. She refused, whereupon I hung up and called Bob Sargent of GA DNR, who monitors Georgia’s eagles, and explained the situation to him.

In less than 10 minutes, Bob had called his contact at Auburn, who overrode the front desk and said to send the bird. By 5:30 Friday, Joy notified me the eagle was safely at Auburn.

Everything else seems kinda mundane after an eagle intake, I know, but hey, we did also have a release! The barred owl regained his freedom late last Sunday, a couple of hours before dusk. He flew to a low limb and when I walked over to get a post-release photo, he took off into the pines behind him.

The HBC red shoulder was moved out into the mini-pen, where he seems to be moving nicely. In a few days I’ll test him in the main flight and see how he fares there; if he’s flying well, he’ll be released, as well.

And, of course, the recently released black vultures are still hanging around being doofuses. How such intelligent birds can be such clowns is beyond me, but they excel at it!

The weird year continues, with reports last month from a county a little over two hours away, verified by DNR and USDA, of some 700 black vultures dead from HPAI, avian influenza. Steve Hicks, a colleague who lives closer to the area, did a little more research and found that the vultures had comprised one of the three or four largest roosts in Georgia.

This leads me to believe, as Steve and I have discussed several times this year, that the HPAI outbreak in Georgia has been more severe than has actually been documented to date. The lower number of intakes—and for fewer species—many of us have been seeing would seem to support this. Unless large numbers of birds are found dead or dying, as was the case with the vultures, most of the public won’t think twice about finding one or two dead birds—if they’re found at all, as most likely died in the woods and were never discovered. People can’t report what they don’t recognize.

It also makes it difficult for rehabbers, who are used to accepting overflow intakes from colleagues, as DNR is discouraging this common practice to avoid potential spread of HPAI into areas not currently affected. Sadly, it’s a sensible recommendation from DNR, as no one wants to be known as the person who brought the disease into their previously uninfected area.

However, all isn’t gloom and doom. The sharpie who’d come in months ago with the wing fracture and subsequently stress-plucked all his tail feathers finally grew enough tail feathers back for a release.

And the barred owl who came in with only road rash on one foot is slated for release early this week.

A second sharpie came in from a game warden in another county last week; he was rail-thin and too weak to hold his head up. After being placed in a donut for support, he was offered slurry every two hours, but it was too little too late. He didn’t survive the night.

The lady who hit this red shoulder said he came out of nowhere and she slammed on brakes but still clipped him. Nothing is broken but there does seem to be some soft tissue damage—maybe a coracoid fracture, which frequently doesn’t show on x-rays. He’s alert and eating well, so we’ll just give him time to heal.

And of course, the recently released black vultures are still hanging around. The older of the two, who’d been at LWR since he was a downy baby, remains more likely to get close enough for good photos and follow me around; the younger of the two, who came in half-grown, is less trusting and tends to go off and do his own thing, but is quite willing to accept handouts.