Y’all know how I love my flyers. Well, last Sunday evening a call came in about three baby flyers whose nest had been destroyed. Hunters somehow backed into the rotten snag Mama Flyer had her nest in, totally destroying the nest. Despite being told that flyers, unlike grays, don’t have multiple nests to move their  babies to, the hunters decided to finish up their hunt before retrieving the babies from the ground where they’d landed. When they came back, they found the poor mama on the ground trying to cover her babies with her own body—I don’t know about y’all, but that mental image just hurts my heart…

The trio of stressed babies, two males and a female, arrived shortly afterward. They were about four weeks old on intake, and one of the poor little males was so stressed he literally screamed—something flyers almost NEVER do.
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After the first couple of feedings they settled down nicely and continue to do well. Their little eyes are beginning to open as of yesterday. I seldom name rehabs slated for release but we do need nicknames for multiples of the same species, so these sibs are Bubba 1, Bubba 2 and Sissy. And is the case with all flyers, they’re utterly adorable.

The red tail who appeared to’ve auditioned for Cirque du Soleil was transferred to Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends, who reports that he’s eating quite well and flying beautifully now—he’d just started navigating the LWR raptor flight from end to end before his transfer.

The barred owl with the slightly impaired vision remains in the mini-pen, along with the barred recovering from the wing fracture. He was going stir-crazy inside so the mini-pen seemed like a good transition as we wait for the callus on the wing to strengthen a bit more. I totally forgot to get photos of them last week; sorry…
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A third barred came in last week with a nasty open fracture; one end of the bone was already black. He was euthanized.

​And Sisyphus the kestrel continues to be a fierce, foul-mouthed little cuss. I’ve been trying for a few weeks now to catch him screaming invectives at me as I changed his paper and finally managed last week. See what I mean about language that would make a sailor blush?!

Last week started with a bang, figuratively speaking, with four—yes, FOUR—birds requiring vet visits on Monday. Three were follow-up x-rays; one was a late Sunday arrival.

Let’s start with that Sunday night arrival, shall we? Just before dark Sunday, LWR received a call about a red tail hawk found by the roadside—seldom a good scenario. The finder arrived about 9:30 with a bird he thought might already be dead, as he was “stiff on one side.”

I picked up the red tail and sure enough, his right side was positively rigid. Something felt wrong. Something looked wrong. As I continued to examine the bird, it became apparent that his right leg was quite literally up to the hip flung over and lodged against his right shoulder—his wing and leg were reversed in position.

Ever heard the expression “ass over teakettle”? Yeah, well, this poor bird was the living personification of that expression.
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After several minutes of gentle manipulation, I managed to get his leg and wing back into their proper positions. As hard as it was to believe, nothing seemed broken, but the poor fellow was concussed and did NOT want to stand; he propped against the corner of the box.

​Monday we x-rayed that bird fifteen ways from Sunday to make sure nothing was broken. Nope. Nothing. But he still didn’t wanna stand. Of course, as vet Peggy Hobby and I agreed, if we’d been in that contorted position, we wouldn’t wanna stand, either. Peggy prescribed a couple of steroid injections a few days apart.

​By Tuesday morning he was standing and would eat if I hand-fed him but wouldn’t touch his food otherwise.

​By Thursday he was self-feeding, and today he’s in the raptor flight, as he was getting restive in his box inside. In a couple of days he’s gonna be transferred to Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends for continued care, as I need the raptor flight for a barred owl who came in Monday afternoon.

​But first, let’s discuss the barred owl I’ve not managed to get any photos of since his intake a month ago because he lunges at the camera lens. He’s not quite ready for the raptor flight yet; his x-ray showed a lovely callus forming but it’s not healed enough just yet. He has another couple of weeks of cage rest.

​Now, as to the other barred: he came in with huge chunk of dried blood next to his beak and a milky left eye. He’s groomed out most of the blood and has at least limited vision in that eye—he can find a white rat on a white puppy pad. Nothing is broken, so he’s in the mini-pen as of today and will go to the raptor flight as soon as the red tail goes to Steve.

​All news wasn’t good, of course—that almost never happens. The screech’s follow-up x-ray showed a total non-union fracture; if anything, it was even more dislocated than it had been initially. He was euthanized.

​Sisyphus the kestrel’s follow-up x-ray looks promising, although what I’d initially said was a ding or a hotspot actually appeared on the x-ray to be where a small sliver of bone poked through. We still think he has a good chance at being an ed bird, though, so in another few weeks we’ll do another follow-up to see where things stand at that point.

​The cat-attacked possum was released and seemed more interested in growling and posturing at the camera than waddling off to safety. I walked away for a few minutes and once the perceived threat was gone, he ambled into the brush and was nowhere to be seen when I came back to check.

​Next week’s update will be on Monday, Oct. 28.

As most of y’all know, I adore possums but seldom take them in because they almost never arrive one or two at a time; it’s usually seven or eight, and always during baby season, when seven or eight possums in addition to upwards of 25 birds, most of whom require feeding at least every half hour is, well, more than one person can handle and do right by all involved.

So when the call came today about a SINGLE possum found in a bucket and possibly cat-attacked, I was quite willing to take the hissy little fellow, as he’s old enough to self-feed and really only needs a round of antibiotics to ward off any possible ill effects from the surmised cat attack.
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He’s stressed, of course, and crazy-hissy, showing off those 50 teeth—yeah, possums have 50 teeth—in what would be an impressive threat display if he were bigger. As it is, I just laugh at the rascal.

As a reminder, possums are not rabies-prone; their core body temp is too low. They also eat slugs, snails, roaches, the ticks that cause Lyme disease, frogs, small rodents and snakes…and they’re immune to rattlesnake venom.  So yeah, possums are EXCELLENT natural pest control.

They have opposable thumbs on their back feet, while their front toes are all evenly sized. Their eyesight is pathetically bad; they’d be classified as legally blind if they were humans. Their sensitive noses compensate for their bad eyesight, though. They use their prehensile tail NOT to hang from tree branches—at least, not as adults; the babies sometimes will—but as an extra “hand” to drag nesting material around.

​Their main defense mechanisms include “grinning” to show off those aforementioned teeth, hence “grinning like a possum,” and literally fainting and feigning death, hence “playing possum.” When playing dead, they’ll sometimes drool, leading people and other potential predators to think they’re rabid when in actuality, I believe there’s been like one case of rabies reported in possums in the past hundred years.  You and I are more likely to have rabies than a possum. They can also emit a foul-smelling discharge from their anus, making them smell dead and thus unappetizing to potential predators.

They’re also North America’s only native marsupial, meaning the female carries and nurses the babies in her pouch. Newborn possums are about the size of a bee; up to 20 may pass through the birth canal but Mama Possum only has 13 nipples, not all of which produce milk, so after 13 babies have latched onto those nipples, almost vacuum-sealing their still poorly-formed mouths to them, the remaining babies are just out of luck…as are the ones on a non-productive nipple. There the survivors remain, locked to a nipple, as it were, for about two and a half months; then they cling to Mama’s back as she forages for food—and if any fall off, oh well…Possums don’t have a strong maternal instinct.

Their lifespan is short, only about four years at the longest, and they’ve changed little in millions of years—how neat is that?!

In short, possums is neat! (Yes, I know it’s bad grammar but it sounds goofier, appropriate for goofy little critters. And if you’re wondering, my source for all this lovely trivia is my memory—it’s stuff I’ve read on possums over the years.)
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Sisyphus the kestrel, the screech and the barred all are due for follow-up x-rays this week. Sisyphus’ wing has been unwrapped for several days now, and he’s keeping it fairly level, so that’s a good sign. So fingers crossed for good outcomes for all of them.

Last week was another typical fall week, with few intakes, a couple of releases, and the three “long-termers” biding their time.
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First, the releases: both the mourning dove and house finch were released. True to predictions, the finch didn’t waste time leaving; the dove, however, did actually hang around for a day or two, so I was able to get a couple of pretty decent post-release shots of him.

Sunday’s possible Coop turned out to be a broad-wing hawk. I see so few of them I actually had to check my bird ID guides to make sure that’s what I had. They’re fairly common in Georgia; LWR just doesn’t see many of them. Upon intake, I was sure the right wing was trashed, although the “professional” who found him or had him for several days before transport—whichever—told the volunteer transporter it was a fixable break. X-rays at Smalley’s showed my assessment was correct; the wing was shattered like a jigsaw puzzle from shoulder to elbow. It was not fixable, and he was euthanized. There are times being right purely sucks.

I didn’t get photos of him before taking him to Smalley’s, but I do, of course, have his x-ray, which shows the damage to his poor wing.

Monday a barred owl came in from the game warden in a neighboring county; he’d retrieved it from someone who’d had it a week, attempting to feed it canned cat food mixed into water—supposedly on the advice of “experts” (the finder’s words) in Fort Valley. To my knowledge there are no raptor “experts” in Fort Valley, and for the record, canned cat food is NEVER appropriate for raptors. NEVER.
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His left wing felt broken in the wrist, and x-rays at Smalley’s showed it was actually his entire hand that was shattered, with no signs at all of calluses forming after a week. Given the lack of any evidence of healing and the fact that barreds are nearly impossible to place as ed birds, we opted for euthanasia. Again, I forgot to take photos of him prior to his trip to Smalley’s, so all I have is his x-ray.

And yesterday a sweet little approximately six-week-old flyer came in, the victim of a dog attack. His rescuer called LWR but I could tell from his voice he had no intention of attempting to bring the poor fellow to me, so I contacted colleagues John and Luanne Brooker, who are focusing solely on deer this year but are in the same county as the caller, and asked if they could get the flyer from the individual and to me, which they did. The rescuer and the Brookers all mentioned the little fellow biting them, which is unusual for flyers, especially babies with their eyes still closed.
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While he never offered to bite me, his intake exam revealed a broken right leg and a punctured patagium (the skin flap between their front and back legs that allows flyers to glide) just below the left elbow. I started meds, got a little food in him and put him on low heat—all SOP for flyers. 

Four hours later I went back to check on him and feed him again before heading to bed myself, and he was in that adorable position baby flyers often assume: on his back with his legs spread-eagled like a little human baby. When I opened the “nursery box,” the sound of the door clicking should have made him jump. It didn’t. I was using a red light, which is also my SOP for feeding flyers at night, so I shone it directly on him for a closer examination, and he was dead. He apparently had internal injuries. At least he just died in his sleep, so there’s that small comfort…

The barred owl recovering from a wing fracture continues to do well. He’s an aggressive little snot who lunges at the camera when I try to get photos, so no pix of him again this week. He can lunge at me all he wants but I’m not risking my camera lens!

The screech recovering from a wing fracture is also doing well and is proving a true master of the screech stinkeye.

​Sisyphus the kestrel was feeling his oats last week and decided to get vocal, so I was cussed out in kestrel loudly and repeatedly all week. While he’s still flipping on his back in defensive mode, I did manage one shot of him actually sort of standing, just before he flipped over and threatened to kill me... Honestly, this bird cracks me up. I thought screeches had attitude, but kestrels have attitude on steroids!