Baby season officially begins

Late last Sunday, LWR received our first official baby of the season: a days-old wood duckling who still had his egg tooth (used by hatching birds to break through the eggshell; falls off a few days later); unfortunately, he hadn’t been with Mama Woodie long enough to learn how to self-feed—ducklings learn to eat by watching the adults scratch in the dirt and grass—and he was just too tiny to have a chance. He died overnight.

A couple of days later, callers in another county said they had an injured baby hawk; originally they thought it might be a baby eagle.  Volunteers AJ and Marshall “ponied” the baby bird to LWR. It was a fledgling mourning dove…Baby #2 for the season! He’s starting to scratch at the feed he’s being offered, so I suspect he’ll be in the flight pen next week.

And then an area college reported an injured great blue heron…that they’d known was injured for TWO WEEKS before anyone decided to quit picking their nose and scratching their butt and DO anything about it. Again, AJ, Marshall and Laurie “ponied” the bird to LWR. Unfortunately, the heron’s wing had an open fracture that had abscessed and, based on the viscosity and color of his poop, the infection had probably gone systemic.  Upon examining the bird, vet Jim Hobby at Smalley’s Animal Hospital agreed that our only option was to humanely end the heron’s suffering.

Taken at Smalley's before exam. You can see the awkward positioning of the broken wing.

Next up was a call about a baby bird in a warehouse. When this bird arrived at LWR, it turned out to be an adult Northern rough-winged swallow, a very pretty little member of the swallow family. This little aerial insectivore (their diet is 100% insects, caught and eaten while flying, or “on the wing”) appears to have a coracoid fracture, which is—for lack of a better comparison to human anatomy—sort of like a broken shoulder blade. It’s not a totally accurate analogy, but you get the idea. I’ve mentioned the fractures before but don’t think I’ve provided a comparison previously. Swifts and swallows generally don’t heal well from these types of injuries, but we’ll remain hopeful.

This little lady (gender arbitrarily assigned) is a sweetheart but because she’s used to eating on the wing, she refuses thus far to self-feed from a dish of live insects. This means she has to be hand-fed every half hour, just like a baby bird. It will be several weeks before she can be placed in the flight pen to see if she will heal to 100% flight capability, so keep your fingers crossed for this sweet little bird. 

The barred owl is slated for movement to the flight pen this week, so we can see how well his wing has healed for flight. Remember, he had no broken bones, just severe tissue damage from being caught in a barbed-wire fence. Hopefully the damage wasn’t massive enough to impede his flight; we’ll soon see…

And the gray squirrel is getting camera-shy and ready to be moved into a pre-release enclosure, where he’ll stay until he’s ready for full release.

This darling little cardinal came in with a dead sibling; the couple who found the nestlings said when they called that they didn’t think the sib would make it, and it died en route. The babies had been placed back in the nest twice previously, but this last fall caused internal bleeding in the DOA nestling; his little belly was full of blood. This surviving nestling, however, is doing well and has a healthy appetite.

Finally,  in case you missed the casual references above to flight pen use, the flight pens are in fact ready for occupancy!!! Since I can’t very well hold an open house for y’all to tour ‘em in person, below are short video tours of each flight—as well as pix, of course. A huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to all the folks who helped make these pens a reality!