YES! After two months of weather delays, we finally had a window of opportunity, and the screeches seized it with both taloned feet!

Because they were downy nestlings/fledglings when they came in back during the summer, I opted for a soft release near the flight pen, in case they needed supplemental food for a few days. I’m happy to report, however, that for three consecutive nights the supplemental mice left out for them were untouched.

Because of the soft release—opening the flight pen door and walking away to let them decide when to leave—there are no release videos. Two left the first night the door was open; the third left the second night. And after the third night of the mice left outside the flight remaining untouched, I finally began to breathe easier, sure that they’re faring well on their own.
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Below are some of the last photos taken before their release.

​The only new intake last week was an adult great blue heron found by the side of the road in Peach County.  This poor fellow’s been through the wringer in his lifetime. He’s an old bird, missing a toe on his left foot, probably snapped off years ago by a turtle. He’s also missing his left eye, another old injury, and the “scalped” spot on the left side of his head also appears to be an old injury, based on the scar tissue. He eats very little and spits back about half of that. Basically, he’s at the end of his lifespan.  To be honest, I came *thisclose* to euthanizing him the evening he came in, but then he stood up and spread his wings, as if he wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. So he’s still making a royal mess in the rehab bathroom (I will NEVER get all the hawk and heron poop off the floor and walls) and eating what little bit I can get him to keep down. He may need euthanasia soon; he may check out on his own. But for whatever time he has left, he’s warm, safe and fed. Sometimes that’s all we can offer.

​Just a reminder, those of you who’re interested in a 2016 LWR calendar need to make a firm commitment to purchase by Dec. 4. The calendars will sell for $20 plus shipping, with purchasers able to order directly through Lulu.com, as in previous years. LWR will receive $8 for each calendar sold, per Lulu’s terms. If I don’t have firm commitments from 25 people by Dec. 4, there will be no 2016 LWR calendar. You can post or PM on Facebook or email me or leave a comment on this post. 

With few phone calls and no new intakes this past week, it felt almost like a holiday. Nice! I don’t expect it to last, but we’ll see…

The HBC screech from last week didn’t make it. If you’ll recall, he was alert and able to snap his beak at me and even eat, but still acted a bit concussed and had a bloody eye. Since he came in late Saturday, the plan was to take him to Smalley’s Animal Hospital for a thorough eye exam on Monday—in fact, I’d already discussed him with Richie Hatcher Sunday evening. 

However…Monday morning I discovered that he’d died during the night—AFTER eating another small mouse. When I texted Richie that I wouldn’t be bringing him in after all and described what had happened, he said it sounded like the screech had a brain bleed, so in effect he was dying from the moment of intake—and it wouldn’t have shown on an x-ray, so there was really nothing we could have done about that. At least he died in a warm, safe environment, with his belly full.

Meanwhile, our screech trio is still in residence. The predicted good weather last week didn’t pan out, as we experienced rain every other day. I’m really beginning to suspect those little feathered hooligans are in cahoots with Mother Nature to keep the weather juuuust nasty enough to preclude their release!
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Once again, the weather forecast for this coming week looks good for a release—as of today—so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the forecast is correct for this week. These rascals need to be released ASAP.

As many of you know, we’ve been doing a LWR calendar for the past several years now as an end-of-year fundraiser.  Unfortunately, these don’t tend to sell well; most years we’re lucky to sell 10 of them, making them hardly worth the effort to produce and garnering less than $100 in funds for LWR. With this in mind, I’m taking a new approach this year. The calendars will sell for $20 plus shipping, with purchasers able to order directly through Lulu.com, as in previous years. LWR will receive $8 for each calendar sold, per Lulu’s terms. However, this year I’m asking for a firm commitment to buy from at least 25 people before going to the effort of creating a calendar. If I don’t have firm commitments from 25 people by Dec. 4, there will be no 2016 LWR calendar.
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Hope everybody has a wonderful Thanksgiving Thursday!

As you may recall, the red-tailed hawk with the wing fracture was slated for surgery last week. We all knew going into the surgery, which was postponed until Friday, that there was only a slim chance it would be successful, but we were hoping for a miracle.

Unfortunately, the miracle didn’t materialize; instead, we found that there was no way to repair the wing. Richie Hatcher of Smalley’s Animal Hospital had consulted avian surgeons for their best practices; he and Jim and Peggy Hobby had discussed the procedure…but in the end, there was nothing that could be done to fix the damage, which we all agreed looked more like someone had grabbed her wing and snapped it than like a collision with a vehicle.

Two hours in, we all realized there was no hope of repairing the wing even enough to allow her to hold it level, so that it didn’t drag and get caught on the perch. Richie and I had agreed before the surgery that if we saw it wasn’t going to work, we’d call it and just put her down on  the table.
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At least for the last two weeks of her life she ate well and wasn’t abused; there’s some small comfort in that.

Lending truth to the old adage, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” the day after we lost the red tail, game warden Dan Stiles called to see if I could take a hit-by-car screech owl. He was on his way to pick it up and if the damage wasn’t so severe as to require immediate euthanasia, he’d bring the screech to me.

Of course, I always have room for one more screech!

The new arrival had been hit by a state trooper Friday night but he couldn’t find the bird in the brush by the road in the dark. He went back the next day and found the screech not far from where he’d hit it, and he called Dan. Kudos to Trooper Robert Sawyer for being conscientious enough to go back and locate the bird and then seek help.
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His right eye is swollen and has a bit of blood in the corner; his beak looks like it has a small crack; he’s still “concussy” and reluctant to open either eye. But he’s alert enough to click that beak in threat, and he did eat most of a small mouse last night, so after one of the vets at Smalley’s examines the right eye to check for retinal damage, this guy should be good to go in a few days.

Above photos are from yesterday; below are photos from today.

​And speaking of good to go, the good-to-go screech trio is still awaiting release…I swear I think they’re manipulating the weather to preclude their release! We’re aiming at a release this week, though, as the temps are supposed to be moderate and the rain chances low. Fingers crossed!

It’s rained pretty much nonstop in Georgia for the past two weeks now, which I’m sure has added greatly to the number of vehicle-deer collisions. Additionally, we’re still experiencing migration, so I shudder to think how that’s been impacted. And in the case of one unlucky migrating coot, the rain was fatal.

Last week, a late evening call reported a medium-sized bird with a broken leg at a storage facility. The caller met me with the bird and a quick parking lot exam revealed it was an American coot with a nasty-looking open leg fracture.

Coots, like grebes and loons, look for water to land in, especially overnight. At dusk, in the rain, the water-coated roofs of the storage buildings and the surrounding asphalt must have looked just like a body of water to this poor coot, who apparently landed awkwardly and snapped his leg.
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A more detailed exam once we were home led me to believe we might be able to save the coot, as the fracture was recent—still bleeding—and appeared to be mid-bone. 

​The next day, however, vet Peggy Hobby at Smalley’s Animal Hospital, after looking at the x-ray of the leg, felt that because of the location—closer to the joint than I had originally thought—and the thinness of the skin, which was already severely damaged, we didn’t have much hope of fixing the coot’s leg, and so he was euthanized.

There IS good news, however: Peggy agreed with Richie that while the chances were slim that surgery would benefit the gorgeous female red tail from last week, it was worth a try, so her surgery is scheduled for Monday—tomorrow.  

Please understand that this is not a sure thing by any means. The callus may have fused the fractured bones together at that awkward angle so that they cannot be repaired. They may shatter during the procedure. The possibility of her ever flying again is very slim, BUT… that small chance in this instance has been weighed and deemed worth the risk.

In the meantime, this laid-back lady has decided to try and eat me out of house and home, inhaling 4-6 jumbo mice a day. I’ve been jokingly threatening to toss a steer in the rehab bathroom with her, betting she’d be picking her beak with a rib bone the next day!
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She’s sitting calmly on an open perch in the rehab bathroom—the raptor flight pen is still filled with screeches—and taking mice from the glove, very gently. This girl knows the drill, which makes her situation all the more infuriating to me and Steve Hicks, who’s recovering nicely from his recent heart attack. 

NOTE: For those with weak stomachs, Her Ladyship rips into one of her mice quite enthusiastically in the video below!

​And finally, yes, the screeches are still awaiting release. They’ve passed the live prey test but we need several consecutive rain-free days before they can be released…and next week is looking much like the past two weeks, according to the current weather forecasts… So yeah, their release is officially experiencing a rain delay!

Nearly every week you read here about birds that must be euthanized because their injuries are so severe that they preclude release. It’s very easy to write the words “due to the extent of his injuries we opted for humane euthanasia.” Takes no time at all to type that out.

But please don’t ever think any rehabber makes that decision lightly or isn’t deeply affected by having to choose euthanasia for an intake. We use clinical terms—intake, humanely put down, end its suffering, etc.—to offer ourselves some emotional distance, to make killing that animal easier. And yes, euthanasia is at its simplest killing the animal. There’s no mincing words about it.

The difference, however, between euthanasia and other forms of killing—hunting, outright murder for sick jollies, accidental (hitting the bird with your vehicle, for example)—is that when a rehabber chooses death for an intake, it is after weighing the options. Would the bird suffer needlessly if it were allowed to live? Would the stress of captivity be too much—could the bird be happy and fulfilled as an educational bird? Would the additional suffering and pain caused by an attempt to treat the bird be worth it in the long run—in other words, would it result in release back to the wild?

Euthanasia comes from the Greek words for “good death.” Is there such a thing as a good death? In our society we often emphasize life at all costs: pain and suffering be damned as long as an individual can be kept alive via whatever measures necessary.

Thankfully, when it comes to animals, pet owners and wildlife rehabbers have the option to consider quality of life rather than “life at all costs.”  And all too often rehabbers have to euthanize—offer a “good death,” a dignified death—to animals whose injuries would render them nonreleasable and whose personalities render them unsuitable for educational birds.

That in itself is a hard enough decision, even knowing it’s the right decision.

But what of the young bird with an injury that means no chance at release but whose temperament would suggest a future as an educational bird? That’s when the proverbial gray area looms large and rehabbers consult each other, have long discussions with their vets and lose sleep as they debate the right course of action.
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Why the long philosophical discussion?

Because that very scenario reared its sleep-robbing, emotionally draining head this past week.

Last week, Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends raptor rehab got in a young red tailed hawk, female, probably early second year. She was found at the American Legion hall in his county, following people around, hopping up on trailer hitches of trucks to perch and generally not acting like a wild bird. When Steve arrived, he offered her a mouse on the glove he was wearing, and she hopped right onto the glove and inhaled the mouse.
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Anybody see a problem there?

​Because I have easier access to vets and because my vets are willing to take chances to save these birds, Steve transferred this girl to me for x-rays and further treatment as needed. Unfortunately, the x-ray revealed that both her radius and ulna were fractured just below the elbow, and it was an old injury, as a nice callus had already started to form. The bones were at more or less right angles to where they should be.

Vet Richie Hatcher of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I discussed options. While amputation at the wrist is allowed by federal law, this was well above the wrist.  Given the degree of callus formation, the only other medical option is to surgically remove the callus, effectively re-breaking the bones and re-setting them properly. The real danger in this procedure would be the bones shattering, as avian bones are essentially hollow.
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Since Steve was in the hospital himself, having had a mild heart attack right after getting this girl in, I opted to hold off on any decision until he and I could talk. When I did speak with him, he suggested I shoot the x-ray to our colleague Kathryn Dudeck at Chattahoochee Nature Center. She and I talked briefly before I sent the x-ray, and after she looked at the x-ray, Kathryn was not hopeful any surgery would work. I let Steve know this. The logical step now would be euthanasia, a “good death” for this regal bird.

But you see, those pesky human emotions have caused a problem here. First, it’s always more emotionally difficult to euthanize a bird who’s healthy aside from an unfixable wing injury. Second, there’s a helluva lot of anger at whoever screwed her up, maybe even broke her wing themselves, and then dumped her without even seeking treatment for her. Third, there is that very slight chance that my talented vets might be able to pull off a miracle.
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The chances are slim, very slim. I’ll not deny that. But just this once I’m leaning toward letting emotion win out over reason and giving this girl a chance, however remote it might be. I think she deserves that much.

In other, less emotionally charged news, the dove seized his chance at freedom and literally flew the coop. I walked over to the flight pen to check on him after the escape hatch had been open a few hours, just in time to see him fly out, land nearby to get his bearings, and then soar off into the distance. I love a good release!
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The hummer in all likelihood won’t be around much longer. I suspect the stress of not being able to respond to the migratory urge is taking its toll. Whether he makes the decision or I have to, his days are numbered at this point. Again, it’s a quality of life debate—at what point can one safely say he has no quality of life? In his case, however, there are no potential miracles to hope for. 

​And the weather has been totally uncooperative for any potential screech releases, so I haven’t really pushed the live-prey testing too much this past week. Next week is looking better, so we’ll have to get back in gear for that and see about getting these insanely photogenic screeches back out into the wild where they belong.