Busy, busy, busy…

It was a rather chaotic week, between intakes, vet visits, releases and just plain general “guest” maintenance.
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The great blue heron that was en route last week exhibited neurological symptoms upon arrival, perhaps from lead poisoning or maybe rodenticide. We’ll never know, as the poor bird died overnight, and the one source of necropsies in the state doesn’t provide even one measly free annual necropsy to rehabbers—and quite frankly, I can’t justify the expense of a necropsy to satisfy my own curiosity. That’s money taken from feeding live birds, so the better option seems to me to be to focus on the living. They can be helped; the dead can’t.

​Hot on the heels of the heron came a youngish turkey vulture—the younger birds tend to have less of the fungusy, poxy-looking stuff on their faces. He didn’t seem to have any wing or leg fractures but refused to stand. Turkey vultures are quite shy, though, so I wasn’t sure whether his not standing was due to shyness or actual injury. I had to wait two days to take him in for a vet visit, though, as his finder had apparently fed him half the contents of her refrigerator, based on her list on the intake form—and vultures digest their food veeeeerrrry slowly…and they stress-puke effortlessly. And it stinks. I’d rather smell skunk spray. Really.

​However, once he’d had time to digest his banquet, it was off to Smalley’s for him, where x-rays showed an old .22 pellet and newer birdshot. Most of the birdshot was lodged in his wing feathers; one piece was lodged in the flesh of his leg. When I explained to vet Richie Hatcher that the vulture seemed unwilling or unable to stand but that it could be just his innate shyness, Richie put a towel on the floor, I sat the bird on it, and he stood up and made a beeline for the corner of the room. Given that his injuries were minor and he could obviously walk with no problems, we agreed he was releasable, which I did that very afternoon.

​Along with the vulture release, the two barred owls from last week who were awaiting x-rays on Monday were also released, as their x-rays showed no fractures. 

​Screech 2’s x-rays on Monday also showed no fractures, but he and Screech 1 had to wait until the end of the week for their turn in the raptor flight—had to get the barreds in and out first.

​Once the screeches were in the raptor flight, the goal became to release them both Monday, as we had pretty firm rain predictions for the weekend (it’s raining as I type, in fact).

​The same day the turkey vulture had his vet visit, another barred owl accompanied him. The owl had been spotted in the finder’s workplace yard, where he hopped from the ground to a car hood to a tree branch and back to the ground but didn’t attempt to fly away when the finder approached him. An intake exam showed no fractures, so I really thought he just had a mild concussion. Still, x-rays are always a good idea. The x-rays showed no fractures; the only physical problem we could find was the beginnings of a cataract on his right eye, which vets Richie Hatcher and Jim Hobby both examined. So again, we had a releasable bird, as he was alert, aggressive and had no fractures.  Great! 

So I didn’t even take the boxes containing the vulture and barred owl out of the car when I got home from the clinic; I ran to the raptor flight and loaded up the weekend barreds for their release, excited to have FOUR releases to report this week…
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…And when I opened the cataract barred’s box, he was stone cold. In the 30 minutes it took me to drive home, pick up the other two birds and drive to the release site, he’d died. NOT the outcome any of us expected but internal soft tissue injuries, like a slow bleed, don’t show on x-rays, so it’s not the first time I’ve had a bird die after x-rays showed nothing—and it won’t be the last. It ain’t pleasant but it’s the harsh reality of wildlife rehab.
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Friday a gorgeous first-year male red-tail came in with a left wing fracture, but it’s kinda odd. His wing droops from the shoulder but the fracture feels like it’s in the wrist—and he has a bloody scrape on the back of that wing close to the elbow. Gonna definitely take x-rays to figure this one out!

​And would you believe yet ANOTHER barred owl came in yesterday morning? Nothing initially felt broken, although he does seem to be favoring his left wing today. He did, however, have fresh blood in his right eye on intake; today the bleeding has stopped but the eye is now very cloudy. Obviously, he’ll make the trip with the red-tail to see what x-rays show on both birds.

As for the long-termers, the poor kestrel must think he’s never gonna see the inside of the raptor flight, but as soon as the screeches are out, he’s in. The female red-tail, the red shoulder, and the barred owl all continue to recuperate, as does the crow.
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And the flyers had to be moved to new digs last week, as they finally succeeded in busting out the side of their old pen with their nocturnal shenanigans, resulting in three escapees. It took two nights to reunite the entire group!