Fall slowdown begins?

Last week’s editing deadlines prevented me from getting the weekly update done; fortunately, it was a fairly slow couple of weeks. Let’s dive right in.

The catbird and blue jay were released within a day of each other and, after a few days of demanding handouts, stopped coming down.

Poe the crow is now in the mini-pen and even exploring outside it occasionally—but he expects the door to remain open so he can go back to his safety zone when he gets tired of flitting about the trees in the yard. He’s getting more independent, though, and doesn’t like to be touched anymore. The outside photo was taken near dark without a flash as I was waiting for him to come back to the mini-pen, hence the fuzzy image.

As always, there were intakes that couldn’t be saved; on August 25 and 27 a red shoulder and a barred owl, respectively, came in with fatal injuries. The red shoulder was euthanized; the barred owl was DOA.

A near-fledgling Eurasian collared dove came in August 24 and, aside from being stubborn about totally self-feeding, is doing well. Eurasian collareds are larger than mourning doves and not actually native to the US, as their name suggests, but all research indicates the two co-exist peacefully.

Two of the three red tails were released. My trusty old point-and-shoot zoom pocket camera apparently has moisture in the body, however, and the lens now stays permanently fogged—which I discovered when I tried to use it at their release—so the only photos I managed were with my phone camera, and I totally missed the first release while fiddling with the point-and-shoot camera. Time to replace “Old Faithful”… or just break down and use the larger one I seldom pull out...

The third red tail, the July 4 intake, is doing much better with no companions in the raptor flight; I think another week or two and he’ll be good for release.

An adult yellow-billed cuckoo, also known as a rain crow, came in August 27 and was released Tuesday, Sept. 1. He was missing most of his tail feathers but still flew strong and straight and was VERY unhappy at being confined—his migratory urges were in overdrive. I managed a few photos at maximum zoom (this was several days before the camera failure), as he took off like a shot straight for the tallest trees he could find.

And on August 30 an adult male great horned owl came in with what appeared to be a left wrist fracture, but x-rays at Smalley’s showed that it was actually a healing hand fracture, both bones. Given that it wasn’t too horribly displaced and was already forming a callus, vet Jim Hobby and I decided a couple of weeks of cage rest, followed by a week or two in the raptor flight, should be enough time to see if the fracture will heal for flight. At the moment it looks really promising, so fingers crossed.