People who call rehabbers on holidays frequently apologize for doing so. I always tell ‘em wildlife doesn’t know what day of the week it is, much less if it’s holiday—nor does it care. Not in its realm of concern at all—days and weeks and months and holidays are all human constructs. When wildlife needs help, it needs it now, not after the weekend or after the holiday!
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That was the case Thanksgiving when a volunteer transporter from south of LWR called about a hawk she’d been asked by local law enforcement to pick up. On her way home from retrieving the hawk, a flash of black in her peripheral vision made her do a double-take; it was a crow hung on a chain-link fence. She initially thought it was dead until it moved slightly, so she stopped and extricated the poor crow from the fence. She then called LWR and made plans to get the birds to me ASAP Friday.

The crow, a fish crow (smaller than an American crow), has a massively infected left eye and some swelling in the left wing, as well, but nothing feels broken. He’ll get x-rays Monday to confirm. The good news is that the eye is showing improvement with meds, and it appears there’s no damage to the eyeball itself, just the swelling in the conjunctiva. 

​However, an intake exam on the hawk, a first-year red tail, revealed an open fracture to the right wing and a closed leg fracture at the hip. There was nothing to be done for the poor bird but end his suffering.

​And the day before Thanksgiving, an adult male barred owl came in, also with a broken wing. Because I knew Smalley’s would be closed for the weekend after Thanksgiving, I needed to get this bird in immediately, so I honestly didn’t even stop to get photos. The x-ray did confirm a bad “hand” fracture, and it was open, as well, so given the bad displacement of the bones and the open fracture, vet Richie Hatcher and I decided the kindest option for the owl was euthanasia.

​The GHO with the badly damaged eye did require euthanasia; as I predicted last week, his eye continued to deteriorate.

And the blind barred owl was also euthanized.
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The kestrel stubbornly refuses to leave any kind of wrap on his wing. I was worried that in his struggles to “unwrap” himself, he might have done further damage to the wing, so when I had the wing-fracture barred owl at Smalley’s Wednesday, I took the kestrel back and asked Richie to re-x-ray his wing. There was no change, thankfully.

And a hawk (the finders think) found in a neighboring county will be en route shortly, so it will join the crow in a trip to Smalley’s Monday unless it comes in with an open fracture. That I can handle myself, without making the bird suffer overnight.
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The flyers are doing their little nocturnal thing and are still as cute as ever. That never changes!

​Finally, for those of you who follow LWR on Facebook, you know that Saturday LWR initiated a small fundraiser, mainly at the urging of Facebook’s admins, who have partnered with a charitable group to match donations made on (and apparently before) Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28 this year.  After the one big fundraiser mid-year, I’d said there would be no more, but hey, if Facebook will match your donations, it’s worth a try, right? The goal is small, $500, and we’ve had $145 donated already, so we have just $355 to go! The link is below, and thank you for any amount you donate, as it will be matched. (Not sure the link will work for those not on Facebook.)

https://www.facebook.com/donate/1493682460713566/1705016719529166/

Not a huge number for a larger center with more staff, but for a one-person operation whose only volunteers are transporters, it’s…a lot. Second year in a row we’ve hit the 300-mark, and there’s still the rest of the year to go, however short. Should be interesting…
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The gorgeous intake of the week was this male kestrel, who came in with a wrist fracture. Kestrels are little works of art; there’s just no two ways about it. They’re also small falcons and so are prone to be high-strung, stressy birds—which this little fellow has NOT been thus far. Well, he’s definitely stressed but he hasn’t opted for high-strung. Yet.

​The fracture was in such a position that it was difficult to see on regular x-rays so vet Jim Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital decided to try something a little different: he took a shot of the leading edge of the wing to see if the fracture would show more clearly so we’d have a better idea of what we were dealing with. It worked!

​Because the bird was keeping the wing pretty close to perfectly aligned and because wrist fractures are often more wrist displacements than actual breaks, we decided to see how this is gonna play out.  After talking with colleagues Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends and Kathryn Dudeck of Chattahoochee Nature Center, our general consensus seemed to be that given the small size of kestrels, traditional figure-eight bandaging would be nigh-impossible. Steve and I had discussed using a tube sock; Kathryn confirmed that she’d done this with a couple of kestrels and mentioned vet stocking as a possibility, as well. I had some larger vet stocking but nothing small enough for a kestrel, so Smalley’s graciously provided several different sizes to see what we could get to work. Unfortunately, Sir Kestrel didn’t like our efforts; the first wrap lasted all of three hours.

​Soo…vet stocking too stretchy; time for tube sock…Second attempt lasted through the night but he’d wiggled out of it by morning.

​Ooookaaay…third time’s the charm?  So far, so good, but he’s sulking and I can see the wheels turning in his devious little mind. I give it till lights-out before he’s maneuvered out of this one, too.

​On a less pleasant note, mid-week a lady called about a pheasant she found tied to a tree in the parking lot of the business where she worked—and don’t EVEN get me started on my thoughts as to what kind of sadistic jackass would do such a thing. I try to keep this page family-friendly and NOTHING I have to say about such a cretin is family-friendly.  The lady who found him thought his leg was broken; on intake I suspected dislocation rather than a fracture. X-rays at Smalley’s confirmed that the leg was indeed badly dislocated; Jim and I noted a lack of neural response and blood flow to the leg, as well. Basically, the bird was done for; there was nothing we could do to repair any of the damage to the leg.

​But in the good news column, the barred owl who’d been antsy to leave the LWR B&B was finally released—and he didn’t waste any time about it, either!

​However…the second barred owl—the one who came in last week with head trauma and clouded eyes—isn’t looking as promising for an eventual release. His eyes have cleared up beautifully, but there appears to be nerve damage.  He seems to be totally blind. Not vision-impaired—completely sightless. He’s not moved from the low perch I put him on in the raptor flight for three days now. Not good at all…

​And the news is worse for the great horned owl. When his eye finally cleared, it revealed a totally trashed eye. I’m giving him another day or two on the very miniscule chance there will be some improvement, but honestly, I know it’s a lost cause. That eye is just gonna continue to deteriorate, and it’s not merely a case of having just one good eye. That damaged eye, as it continues to deteriorate, will eventually deform the entire side of his face, to say nothing of the pain it’ll cause. As I’ve said before, sometimes the only release we can offer is a release from suffering…

There’s no change with the red-tailed hawk; surgery is still an option but we run the very real risk of shattering the bone when we try to remove the pellet, so we’re holding off for a while longer, because nothing sucks worse than having to make the decision to just let an anesthetized bird not wake up because the surgery goes south.
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The flyers remain utterly adorable, of course.

​And let me take this opportunity to wish y’all a happy Thanksgiving!

Just two new intakes this week but both were owls: a HBC barred owl and a probable HBC great horned owl.

First, though, an update on the cardinal that came in last Sunday: despite a healthy appetite, he checked out on us Tuesday. He never recovered from the paralysis, and his breathing remained labored, but he was alert and hungry…and then, within the space of an hour, he died, poor baby.

Then, on Thursday, a truly nasty day—rainy, cold and just blah—two owls came in from a neighboring county. While the same person brought both, she was transporting one for her local vet clinic, where the bird had been sitting since the beginning of the week while they tried to play rehabber. Folks, let me state right now, a vet clinic is no place for a wild animal long-term. Barking dogs and yowling cats can cause enough stress to kill wildlife. It was not a smart move to house the owl in that clinic while they played rehabber, especially not with three federally licensed raptor rehabbers within an hour’s drive north, south and east of them.
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This great horned owl has a massive eye injury; when I took him to Smalley’s Thursday afternoon, vet Jim Hobby said nothing looked displaced in the eye, although it was hard to be certain, as there was still a lot of blood, making it difficult to see the retina. We’re treating the eye and hoping for at least a partial recovery of vision in it. At least he had no fractures.

The second owl was one the transporter had found and taken to this other clinic where, inexplicably, after playing rehabber for almost a week with the GHO, they decided to refer her to an actual rehabber. Maybe the novelty had worn off; that’s usually what happens when non-licensed individuals start mucking around with things they don’t understand and have no permits for. At any rate, this poor barred owl was concussed out of his gourd; he couldn’t stand up and his eyes were tightly shut.
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Jim also examined him and again, this lucky bird also had no fractures, but both his eyes were filled with blood and very cloudy. The lenses and retinas seemed okay, as best Jim could tell through the blood, so once again, it was a matter of giving the bird time to get over the concussion. He’s still a bit loopy—head trauma can take time to resolve—but he is opening his eyes a bit more as of today, and they’re looking much clearer. 

​And while I was headed to Smalley’s, I took the red-tail back in for re-examination and new x-rays. Our original x-ray had just been the injured wing, which had a pellet lodged in the head of the bone near the wrist. My fear was that it had migrated or actually caused a fracture once the bird started trying to use the wing. This time, we had more of the left side of the body in the initial x-ray, and vet tech Autumn Parker and I noticed what looked like more lead, so we did a full-body x-ray and discovered the poor bird had not one but SIX pellets lodged throughout his body. ​The full-body x-ray also showed numerous old, healed injuries; this bird’s had a rough life.

Don’t even get me started on what I think of anyone who’d shoot a red-tail—or any other bird, for that matter—deliberately, but our best guess is he might’ve been flying over a dove field near the end of dove season and flew into a hail of pellets as hunters were shooting at doves. It wouldn’t be the first time a raptor was hit while flying over a dove field, as hunting doves isn’t a precise “sport” (and I use the term loosely and with no little sarcasm)—it’s more “spray and pray.”
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At any rate, Jim agreed that the wing pellet shouldn’t be interfering with flight unless it had severed a tendon or ligament, which wouldn’t show on an x-ray, or was pressing on a nerve—again, not visible on an x-ray. We briefly discussed the possibility of surgery to remove the pellet to see if it would help; we’re keeping that on the table as an option.

​Meanwhile, the red-tail is back inside so the barred owl from last week can get some flight conditioning prior to his release. He’s, well, not a happy camper, but a less-peeved one now that he’s in the raptor flight. Below is an example of what a frustrated raptor can do to his box.

​He’s slated for release later this week.

The flyers are as adorable as ever and start getting active just before sunset; the remainder of the night, they bounce all over their enclosure. Come sunrise, they’re shut up tightly in their nest box, and I don’t see them all day long. I often hear people say they’d love to have flyers as pets. Aside from the fact that it’s illegal to have wildlife as “pets”, no nocturnal animal makes a good pet unless you also sleep all day and are up all night. Flyers are cute as they can be, but they’re wild animals and deserve the chance to live their lives as nature intended. These young ones are overwintering at LWR because flyers remain with their mothers until they’re 20 weeks old; for these babies that would be approximately the end of December—not a good time to release inexperienced young animals, as there’s little food available that time of year and they have no supplies laid up for the winter. Also, young flyers usually overwinter with their mothers, so that’s another factor that keeps them at LWR through the winter.
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Every decision we make concerning food, housing, overwintering, release, medical treatment, etc., is made with the best interest of the wildlife in mind. The goal is to give each animal the best chance at survival after release, and we take that very seriously.

Yeah, welcome to fall in the South: near-freezing temps to start the week and windows open and fans on to end it. At least the wildlife isn’t confused, as their breeding cycles generally revolve around length of day.
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The blustery, icy winds that began the week did result in a somewhat unusual visitor at LWR, however. Last Sunday as I was making my “feeder rounds” to top off all the outside feeders, something crashed to the ground right behind me beneath a tree I was walking under. I turned, expecting to see a branch dislodged either by the wind or the gray squirrels, and instead there was what initially appeared to be a fairly large piece of gravel! I looked more closely, and it was a gray tree frog, icy-cold to the touch. He probably fell because he was too cold to keep his grip in the tree. Inside he went, where he spent the night in warmth and safety, and as soon as it warmed up sufficiently Monday afternoon, I placed him back on the tree he’d fallen from. Fifteen minutes later he was long gone!

​LWR had three new intakes this week: two adult male cardinals and an adult male barred owl. The barred owl was hit by car—actually, I suspect he was “nudged” by car, as he has no injuries aside from a rapidly diminishing concussion. He’s alert, aggressive and headed for the raptor flight in the coming week.

In order to move him into the raptor flight, however, we have to make arrangements for the red-tailed hawk currently residing there. If you’ll recall, he was shot about a month ago and the pellet lodged in his wrist, right at the head of the bone. He has since been unable to fly. Colleague Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends and I were discussing our “problem patients” earlier in the week and agreed that new x-rays might be in order to see if the pellet has shifted. There’s also the possibility that the pellet is wedged against a nerve. He’ll go back to Smalley’s this coming week to see what we can find. His survival may well depend on the results.
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The first male cardinal came in early in the week. He was unable to fly but his wings weren’t broken. He had full use of his legs and a healthy appetite and was quite alert, so I honestly figured he had a coracoid fracture that would just need time and rest to heal. He died 48 hours after intake. I suspect now that he was simply an older bird who’d reached the end of his lifespan. At least he died with a full crop; sometimes that’s all we can offer.

​The second cardinal came in this morning. He has all the hallmarks of a windowstrike victim but his finder says there were no windows near where he was found. There was, however, a thick post. I’m guessing he struck the post and compressed vertebrae in his neck. His legs are pretty much useless, his breathing is labored, and I’m not real optimistic about his final outcome, to be honest. We’ll see…

​And then we have the flyers…All six are doing well, although getting them all in one photo is…ummm…challenging. I did manage yesterday when they all decided they were thirsty at the same time!

The bird you hear in the video below is the white African collared dove I've mentioned previously. Unscrupulous jackasses raise these birds and then sell them to uninformed and/or uncaring people to release at weddings and funerals, and since the birds are white (a neon "eat me" sign for predators), unprepared for fend for themselves in the wild, and NOT homing pigeons to return home, they're released to their deaths. What better way to commemorate the beginnings of wedded bliss or the passing of a loved one than with the death of an innocent bird, right? (HEAVY sarcasm there, in case you didn't recognize it.)

Okay, now I ask you, how could I resist the comment below for this pic?

                                                                       The end