Babies and babies and babies—oh my!

Okay, so it’s a lame ripoff of The Wizard of Oz…What can I say? Sleep deprivation and exhaustion will make a
rehabber…unoriginal, at best!

The finches and Carolina wren have all been released; as of today, I’m seeing only one of the finches periodically, although I hear the  others.  The mocker will still half-heartedly beg for a handout but usually flies away as I approach him.

The mourning dove was flying well enough for release, which is a wonderful turnaround from when he came in. If you’ll recall, I really thought we would have to euthanize him. 

The mallard is slated for release this week.

The robin is doing great; he did pluck out his flight feathers on the injured wing, preening at the splint, though, so we now must wait for the flights to grown back. Meanwhile, he flaps like crazy (never when I have the camera or camcorder handy, of course…). The instinct is definitely there; only time will tell if the ability is.

These two blue jays came in several days apart. The younger one, first photo, had a massively infected eye and you can also see the blood on his little wing. The older one was very lethargic, with a very pale gape. We started antibiotics and rehydration on both immediately upon intake, but neither made it through the night. 

King snakes are truly beneficial snakes, with voracious appetites for rodents and other snakes, including rattlesnakes. They’re easy to identify, as well, even from a distance, so it always ticks me off when some jerk runs over a king snake. This one was near the side of the road when found, meaning that he’d probably just started to enter the road. The jackass who hit him had to go out of his way and nearly off the road to run over a snake that was doing him no harm and was clearly a king snake. Folks, learn to identify the good snakes and leave them alone!

The red-bellied woodpeckers will be headed for the flight pen this week. The runt is still behind his sibs developmentally and I may keep him in a while longer; we’ll see. The bluebird will probably join them in the flight pen, as well.

Head tucks are sweet anyway, but they're especially adorable when the bird is a woodpecker and he's clinging to his "tree" while he sleeps!

When an outdoor cat killed one of these Carolina wrens’ parents, the young rescuer bought worms and supplemental-fed the nestlings, aiding the surviving parent in keeping the babies alive. However, when he found them out of the nest, he worried that something had happened to the surviving parent and asked his mother to get the nestlings to LWR. So far they’re doing just fine; with wrens a “take it a day at a time” philosophy is definitely in order, so that’s exactly what we’re doing.

The people who rescued this brown thrasher saw him grounded with a cat nearby. They weren’t sure if he’d fallen from the nest or been stolen from the nest by the cat. He had a ruptured air sac and a scraped hip, both of which could have been caused by a fall or the cat, so I started antibiotics as a precautionary measure and planned to drain the ruptured air sac if it didn’t deflate on its own within a day or two—not a difficult or even especially painful course of action, but stressful for the bird. Fortunately, it deflated without needing draining, and the thrasher is doing quite well.

These poor rabbits had a double whammy. Their mother was killed by a cat and their nest was destroyed by a lawn mower.  Just a reminder, folks—keep your cats indoors, and do a quick walk-through of your yard before mowing to check for fledglings or unnested baby birds, rabbit nests, turtles, etc.