Apparently somebody left the freezer door wide open on the South—indeed, most of the Eastern seaboard—and so with daytime temps in Georgia barely above freezing and nighttime temps in the teens or low twenties for most of the week and even some snow along the Georgia coast, ain't nobody been outside a whole lot this week (yeah, it’s grammatically incorrect, but it’s colloquially dead-on, so there).
The result was no new intakes this week and a lot of worries about how the birds in the wild who aren’t used to these types of sustained frigid temps fared—this is Georgia, after all, and we’re supposed to have a humid subtropical climate, meaning short, mild winters and long, sweltering summers! I know my feeders have been wiped clean morning and evening, so the squirrels and seed-eating birds in/near my yard have been doing nicely, but what about the insectivores and the raptors? Freezing temps mean no insect activity and very little rodent activity, and GHOs have, at the least, eggs in the nest; some may already have babies hatched.
So there’s not much to report this week. The red-tail, barred owl and red-shoulder recovering from wing fractures are eating well and alert—no new photos this week.
The kestrel and crow, who were slated for follow-up vet visits this week, didn’t leave the house—I wasn’t dragging anything that wasn’t bleeding from every pore out into the weather we were having. It’s supposed to be warmer this coming week, so they’ll be headed for Smalley’s later in the week.
The result was no new intakes this week and a lot of worries about how the birds in the wild who aren’t used to these types of sustained frigid temps fared—this is Georgia, after all, and we’re supposed to have a humid subtropical climate, meaning short, mild winters and long, sweltering summers! I know my feeders have been wiped clean morning and evening, so the squirrels and seed-eating birds in/near my yard have been doing nicely, but what about the insectivores and the raptors? Freezing temps mean no insect activity and very little rodent activity, and GHOs have, at the least, eggs in the nest; some may already have babies hatched.
So there’s not much to report this week. The red-tail, barred owl and red-shoulder recovering from wing fractures are eating well and alert—no new photos this week.
The kestrel and crow, who were slated for follow-up vet visits this week, didn’t leave the house—I wasn’t dragging anything that wasn’t bleeding from every pore out into the weather we were having. It’s supposed to be warmer this coming week, so they’ll be headed for Smalley’s later in the week.
This is the kestrel's reaction every time I go near him.
The crow amuses himself with games of peekaboo through his beak-crafted window.
The barnie weathered the cold temps nicely in the raptor flight. He’s ready to go flight-wise but I won’t release inexperienced hunters in winter. Ain’t gonna happen, with prey harder to find. Come spring, with more prey activity, his lack of hunting experience won’t be as big a factor.
The same principle applies to the flyers, as we’ve discussed before—with no food supplies laid in for winter and no shelter located, they’d not fare well with a winter release either, even though technically they’re old enough for release.
The goal of wildlife rehab is to return our charges to the wild, yes, but not to dump them out willy-nilly and hope for the best. As rehabbers, we do everything we can to ensure that our releases are as prepared as possible for survival in the wild, and sometimes that means overwintering wildlife that reaches maturity during a period when release would most likely result in death by starvation. Another couple of months and the conditions will be more amenable for release—and, more importantly, survival.
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