With all due respect to the Bard, tomorrow’s not creeping at a petty pace, not in the least. Tomorrow is THE DAY. The barred owl’s pin will be removed tomorrow afternoon and then we’ll see how well this unhappy camper fares. He’s been using his wing, fully extending it, but as I cautioned last week, the bone could shatter during removal of the pin or when he tries to use the wing after its removal. At this point I’m a bit on tenterhooks as I wait to see what the outcome will be.

Below is his latest x-ray.

We also have graphic evidence of his “prisoner” mentality.

And finally, a shot of Mister Attitude himself, next to part of his perch.

A local bank called last week about a “large” hawk in their parking lot; as luck would have it, I was actually on my way to town anyway, so I was able to swing by and chase a late first-year small male red tail through their parking lot and into the empty lot next door. His wing, drooping badly, felt to me as if it had healed in the wild. X-rays confirmed that both the radius and ulna were fractured, badly displaced, and had already mostly healed in their badly displaced positions. We euthanized, of course, as this was an unfixable injury.

Birds and plate-glass windows are a really bad combo, so when a local car dealership called me to report a window strike who was alert but seemed to have wing issues, I wasn’t hopeful at all. The bird, a gorgeous adult male Eastern towhee, seemed a bit out of place in town, to be honest. These are “brush birds” who are often difficult to spot as they rummage through leaf litter in thickets and the edges of wooded areas. Let’s face it; there’s not a lot of underbrush or leaf litter at a car dealership! Georgia has towhees year-round, but this fellow may be a fall migrant from Parts North.

Vet Jim Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I were delighted when the towhee’s x-ray showed no fracture. His wing does droop a bit, though, so it could be badly bruised or he may have a coracoid fracture, a common injury in window strikes. This type of fracture cannot typically be felt and usually doesn’t show on an x-ray, so the general treatment is to confine the bird’s movements for a couple of weeks to allow it time to heal on its own.

Sir Towhee is NOT happy about his confinement, but he IS eating well, so we’re just gonna give him the time and support he needs to heal.

And this morning, this gorgeous red bellied woodpecker came in, also with a wing injury. His rescuers saw what appeared to be two red bellies tangling on the ground, so this fellow may have been the loser in a territorial battle. He’s rather thin but alert and typically ill-tempered, as you can see in the videos. The plan is to get his wing x-rayed tomorrow.

Finally, I’m getting ready to pull some of the better pictures from this year for use in the 2015 LWR calendar, which I hope to have available for sale by early November. This will be our final fundraiser for the year, so let’s make it a good one! 

…but it’s still painful when you lose ‘em, too. That never changes. Rehabbers develop what some call clinical detachment, which to me implies a total separation from the scene playing out before them. I prefer the term “clinical distance”, which seems to imply that the rehabber is very much a part of the scene but must step back emotionally in order to do what’s best for the wildlife.

This gorgeous slightly over one-year-old red tailed hawk came in last week with a broken wing. How do I estimate age? Look at his eyes: they’re just beginning to develop the caramel color that would mark a two-year-old bird.  A mature bird’s eyes will be dark brown. 

Of course, with closed fractures, x-rays are necessary to determine the extent of the break and whether it’s fixable.  The x-ray on this guy, however, showed a jaggedly broken, almost open, badly displaced break. This wasn’t fixable. We had no option but euthanasia.

Now, it’s very popular among the uninitiated to protest that rehabbers and vets should mend a bird in this shape as best they can and keep him as an educational bird.  Unless the bird is very young and has never experienced total freedom, I can’t in good conscience agree with that viewpoint.

A bird that has experienced free flight will never, ever be truly happy in captivity. No matter how “enriched” his environment is, it is NOT freedom. He’s alive, yes, but he’s not LIVING. Do you see the difference?  This is no way for such a magnificent bird to spend the remainder of his days. If I can’t offer him the hope of free, unfettered flight, I can at least give him a humane, dignified, peaceful death.  Life-saving is always preferable, but all too often rehabbers must choose life-ending. We do so because of our determination to make the decision that is right for the wildlife under our care. Their welfare isn’t our major concern; it’s our ONLY concern.

Sometimes we think a critter has a good chance at survival and release, even though it looks pretty rough. This mallard was a victim of repeated attacks by other ducks and geese; his rescuer actually intervened as he was about to be attacked again.

All the feathers had been plucked from his neck and the skin was raw, bleeding and beginning to get infected in spots, but vet Richie Hatcher and I both thought his prognosis was pretty good. Oral antibiotics and ointments would fight the infection and ease the pain of the plucked neck, and while he was thinnish, his weight wasn’t too far off the baseline weight for mallards and his appetite was good.

Unfortunately, our optimism was misplaced and the poor mallard died overnight. Maybe he was sick to begin with, and that’s why he had been so viciously attacked by the other ducks and geese; maybe the damage to his neck was more severe than we thought. In this instance, though, we opted NOT to euthanize because our assessment was that he had a fighting chance at survival and release.

And then we have our long-term guest, the barred owl with the pinned wing…He’s doing great and will likely have the pin removed in the next week or so, as his x-rays are showing only minimal weekly improvement now. This means the healing has advanced about as much as it ever will.

Then the nail-biting begins for us as we hope and pray that the wing doesn’t snap and splinter the first time the owl attempts to use it without the pin stabilizing it. This is a very real possibility that we’ve been aware of from Day One. The x-rays have shown continued callus formation, which should stabilize the wing, but in the real world, anything could happen. We won’t know till we know—comforting thought, huh?

Welcome to a rehabber’s world.

*With apologies to Charles Dickens

Actually, it was a fairly typical week: life and death, highs and lows. Beginning with the “mediums”, let’s update the barred owl situation. His latest x-ray shows the bones still healing, albeit slowly. We guesstimate another two weeks, minimum, with the pin in place. Could be longer, but Lord knows Sir Barred and I both hope not. As I mentioned last week, he’s a pretty unhappy camper—and with good reason. See, his hormones are in full swing. This is the time of year he should be out looking for a mate, not sitting in confinement. His hormones scream, “Find a mate”; his broken, pinned and healing wing says, “Whoa there, buddy; you ain’t goin’ nowhere just yet!” Can’t really blame the poor fellow for being a bit of a basket case at this point!

When the call came midweek about a great blue heron in someone’s driveway with ants already starting to attack, I figured we were not looking at a good scenario, and probably not a happy ending. The caller got the bird to me quickly, and he was rail-thin, lethargic, and had his feet balled. When I first started working with larger waterfowl, a waterfowl-only rehabber on the coast who’s since retired told me balled feet are a sign that it’s pretty much a done deal. Still, I started meds and a small amount of fish slurry to see if he could keep any food down. Fifteen minutes later, most of his very tiny meal was all over his box. Still, he did appear to’ve kept a bit of it down, so maybe, just maybe if we kept small meals going throughout the day…But no, he died during the night. It was too little, too late.

Late in the week, a caller said he’d found a dead brown-headed cowbird near his feeder, had one currently sitting at it looking lethargic and had seen another one having difficulty flying. I suspected I knew the problem but asked if he could get the lethargic bird to me for confirmation. It actually died en route, but an examination of the carcass did confirm my suspicions: it was mycoplasmic conjunctivitis, aka “finch eye.” The nickname comes from the fact that it’s most commonly seen in finches, but it is highly contagious to other birds. Birds with finch eye have inflamed, often crusty eyes, and sometimes discharge from their nares (nostrils). Since they can’t see well, their flight is uncertain; eventually, as the disease progresses, they’re blinded and starve to death, as they can’t see to fly or to eat.

How does finch eye spread? Birds, when they’re done eating, wipe their beaks on the branch, the feeder—whatever is at hand to serve as a “napkin.” Infected birds thus leave behind germs to infect other birds. Feeders are prime breeding grounds for diseases like finch eye.  While it is treatable if caught early, it also has a tendency to recur. Some rehabbers attempt to treat; others euthanize because of the high rate of recurrence. For this bird, it was a moot issue, obviously.

I explained to the rescuer that he needed to take down his feeders, clean them thoroughly with a mild bleach solution (1 part bleach to 10 parts water), and leave them down for a few days. Honestly, I recommend this as a routine weekly maintenance task for anyone who has feeders. My suggestion is to have backup feeders, so you can rotate them out: while one is being cleaned, you already have the one you cleaned the previous week to replace it with. This rotation method works well with hummingbird feeders, also.

And finally, while this isn’t, strictly speaking, a rehab story, it’s just too neat not to share. Hognose snakes are non-venomous, very shy, and will often play dead when threatened. Their name comes from their upturned noses. There are three major subspecies, Western, Eastern and Southern. In Georgia, as is the case in much of the South, the Eastern and Southern subspecies overlap, with the Southern being the smaller of the two. Southern hognose snakes are officially listed as threatened in Georgia, and I haven’t seen a hognose snake of either Georgia species in about a decade.

So you can imagine my delight when I found a baby hognose snake—and I do mean baby, as in recently hatched—in my yard last week! He appears to be an Eastern hognose—the Southerns have a more pronounced upturn to their snouts and their bellies are lighter colored. According to my research, the eggs laid in summer hatch from mid-September to mid-October, and the hatchlings are six to eight inches long. As you can see in the photos below, my guy was around or just over the six-inch mark, making him a very recent hatchling. The exciting thing to me is that somewhere nearby he has siblings! I’ve been manically checking my yard since finding this “leetle feller” to see if any of his sibs also wander into the yard, but so far he’s been the only one I’ve seen.

As you can see, the hognose could easily be mistaken for a pygmy rattler, also found in Georgia, so exercise caution should you think you see a hognose, and be certain that you actually know what you’re looking at. While I realize most people don’t want snakes in their yard—me included, because the damned rat snakes somehow always manage to get in my flight pen and eat one or two of my rehabbing birds every year—puh-LEEZ don’t just knee-jerk kill any snake you see; take the time to identify it and relocate it if it’s one of the “good guys”! 

Since his small size made him “bird bait” for the larger birds who frequent my back yard, after snapping the above photos, I moved him to a safer area with plenty of leaf litter and rotting branches to hide in/under—and plenty of insects, since he was a bit too small to manage the frogs and toads that will make up the bulk of his diet when he’s older.

Yeah, I like alliteration—I’d say so sue me, but in today’s litigious society, that might be an unwise statement!

Let’s start with a lovely release. The titmouse was rarin’ to go and flew away in a flurry of feathers when the weather finally cooperated last week. I love releases!

The blue jay is nearing the end of his molt—and of his patience with humans. He only showed up once this week and wasn’t too thrilled when I snapped these few photos of him. I don’t expect him to show up again, at least not to let me get close enough for photo ops.

The barred owl remains an unhappy guest, but his wing fracture still hasn’t healed well enough to remove the pins. Vet Richie Hatcher of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I agreed that we’re in no hurry on this, as we want the owl to have the best shot possible at release. We’ll x-ray again this week and see where things stand. Of course, once the pin is removed, he’ll go into the flight pen to build up range of motion in that wing and regain his flight strength so he can be released as soon as possible.

And finally, pull up a seat while I hop on my soapbox.  When I see people post on social media that they have wildlife and all their buddies begin to tell them a bunch of unlicensed people to take it to and/or give them utter crap advice about how to care for it, I weigh in. To be honest, by the terms of my permits, I’m required to report known or suspected illegal activity, and I usually warn people of this to give them a chance to do the right thing. Without fail, when I do this I’m attacked personally. Most recently, I was told to f**k off, called an asshole, a total dumbass, a bitch, an idiot, had my morals questioned, was informed I was definitely “not a Christian” (and if the accuser is an example of Christianity, I definitely DON’T fall into that particular category) and was accused of wanting all the wildlife to come to me so I didn’t “miss out” on any “government funding.”  (Could someone please tell me where this fabled government funding is? I’m sure all my colleagues would like to know, as well!)

I wish I could say this was a rare occurrence, but sadly, every rehabber I know across the globe can recount similar tales on an ongoing basis—and yet people wonder why our patience is thin to nonexistent and why the burnout rate is so high among rehabbers.

Many of you already know this, but for newcomers, lemme give ya a quick overview of a rehabber’s situation:

1)      We’re trained, licensed professionals who generally receive no salary and are not allowed by the terms of our permits to solicit donations as individuals. There are exceptions to the “no salary” rule; in larger cities some rehab/wildlife centers do have paid staff, but the vast majority of rehabbers around the nation are home-based, single-person operations—and unpaid. Some of us form 501(c)(3)s, like Laurens Wildlife Rescue,  so that we can legally fund-raise through the non-profit to help offset the cost of rehabbing these critters, and our donors get a tax break.  

2)      We must conduct ourselves professionally even when abused, slandered and libeled, because not only OUR reputation but that of every other rehabber in the world is at stake.

3)      In the US, the terms of our permits mean that the state and, in the case of those of us who are federally permitted, the federal wildlife agencies can come to our door at any reasonable hour and conduct an inspection of our facilities and paperwork—with no prior warning.

4)      We deal with a public that is largely ignorant of the laws regarding possession of wildlife. Many people assume that unless the mammal or bird is on an endangered list, it’s perfectly legal to keep it. IT’S NOT. Here’s what the Georgia DNR has to say on the issue: http://www.georgiawildlife.com/NativeWildlifeLaws. And here’s what US Fish & Wildlife says: http://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/RegulationsPolicies/mbta/mbtintro.html. While the FWS link has a further link on that page to the complete list of federally protected birds, let me give you the Cliff’s Notes version: pretty much everything with feathers is protected. When in doubt, contact a rehabber.

5)      We sacrifice time, money, sleep, health and social lives, often putting in 20-hour days, because of our passion for wildlife, not because of our love for people. Most of us are definitely NOT people persons and will tell you so in a heartbeat. We’d be delighted if we could help the wildlife without having to deal with the public at all. And remember that most of us also have full-time paying jobs and families to care for.

6)      We must keep records on every single critter we receive, because the state and, for us federally licensed folks, the feds require annual reports detailing how many critters we received, where they came from, why we got ‘em, what we did for ‘em and what the final outcome was. Failure to file these reports means loss of our permits.

7)      In addition to THAT paperwork, those of us with non-profits must remember to pay the incorporation fees and file our non-profit’s taxes so our organization can keep its tax-exempt status, as well as publish newsletters or maintain websites and blogs and a social media presence, again to retain our tax-exempt status.

8)      We TRY to educate people, formally and informally. In formal settings, like educational programs and blogs, we generally get a decent reception. In informal settings…well, see above.

9)      While the general public image of wildlife rehab is of a Disneyfied situation where we play with, cuddle and coo to healthy, happy critters, who then hang around us as our friends forever, the reality is that about half the wildlife we receive will die or require euthanasia as a result of injuries or illness. It takes a mighty strong stomach to be a rehabber; we see horrendous injuries. Further, a good 95% of the wildlife we receive is a result, direct or indirect, of human activity: hit by vehicle; victim of free-roaming cats or dogs; poisoned; caught in leg-hold or sticky traps; tree felled or limbs trimmed without checking first for bird or squirrel nests; kidnapped fawns and fledgling birds…None of the wildlife WANTS to be with us and, in the case of raptors, can often be downright dangerous. Furthermore, we handle the wildlife under our care as little as possible; there is no “playing with” the critters. If we imprint an animal, our screw-up can cost us our permits, and even if that weren’t the case, our goal is the successful rehabilitation and release of that critter back into the wild where it belongs.

10)   We don’t rehab because it’s “fun.” It’s expensive; it’s exhausting, and it’s all too often emotionally devastating.  The expense, the public abuse and the stress frequently combine to lead rehabbers to leave the profession. Most never return, finding that they like sleeping a full eight hours at night, being able to go on holiday or make plans with friends and family, and actually having a little money at the end of the month.

So if that’s what wildlife rehab is like, why do we do it? For a number of reasons, but they can probably all be boiled down to this: It’s our small way of compensating for man’s ongoing damage to the environment.  Yes, the vast majority of the wildlife we work with are so numerous they’re considered “common” and not at risk; we like to think our paltry efforts, scattered across the globe, keep it that way. There’s an immense feeling of satisfaction when a bird, mammal, or reptile you worked your butt off to save can finally be released. There’s great joy in watching a hatchling bird mature to the point of release and fly into the sky to join others of his species. There’s grim acknowledgement that if you can’t do anything else for a suffering critter, you can humanely end its suffering. And when you explain to a caller how to reunite babies with their parents without requiring a rehabber’s intervention, and they call back to delightedly report that they witnessed the reunion, there’s an amazing sense of accomplishment.

Perhaps this poster from my South Carolina colleagues at PAWS sums it up best: