False start to baby season?

After a sudden influx of babies the previous week, last week saw…almost nothing—at least, not babies.

First, the bad news—both sets of nestlings, the probable chipping sparrows and the Carolina wrens died, one set on Monday night, the second on Tuesday night. Both sets were alert, healthy, gaping and eating well, poop was normal…who knows? I expected the Caros to be problematic, as they’d been cat-attacked, but they were on meds, even though there were no obvious wounds. The probable chippers took me by surprise; I really thought they were doing well—and they were…until they weren’t, overnight.
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Early in the week, a grounded loon came in, found in the parking lot of the local hospital. It had rained the previous night, so he probably mistook the rain-wet parking lot for a body of water and crash-landed. Loons are designed strictly for the water or the air; their legs are set too far back on their bodies for them to walk on land. If they end up on land, as in a crash-landing of this sort, they use their wings to drag themselves along the ground. Luckily, this fellow didn’t even have road rash and was releasable the same day.

​However, the adult male downy woodpecker who came in after being found by the roadside wasn’t as lucky. His head was twisted at a godawful angle, called wry neck or stargazing, and I suspected it wasn’t treatable. He’d probably been sideswiped by a car; his finder said it was a residential area of town so the cars were moving slowly, but the right angle of impact, even on a slow-moving vehicle, can cause terminal damage to a small bird like a downy. He was started on a mild anti-inflammatory to see if it would help, but he died within hours of intake.

​Yesterday a young adult mourning dove came in after hitting a window the previous evening. The finder had let her sit in a box overnight to see if she was just stunned, but she was still groggy that morning. Another 24 hours of rest at LWR and she was rarin’ to go. No videos of the release; she didn’t give me time before she hauled butt!

And today, a cat-caught Carolina wren fledgling came in. There are no obvious injuries—no broken bones, no puncture wounds—but the poor bird is stressed to the max. He’s been started on meds but honestly, as stressed as he is, I’m not optimistic about his chances.

​The house finch is perching and actually flying quite well, as a couple of escapes in the house have proven, but she’s not self-feeding yet. She’s started to show an interest in the food in her crate, though, so she should be ready for the songbird flight sometime this week.

The cedar waxwing, while eating every berry offered, shows a decided preference for raspberries—go figure. I’ve actually never tried them on raspberries before, usually sticking to blueberries, blackberries and the like. No new photos of him this week, as he’s apt to try and flutter out of his crate—not good for a bird recovering from a wing fracture.
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The two screeches are…well, not meaning to be punny, but they’re a hoot. Big gal seems to think it’s her job to protect the smaller male, so this is what I see when I check on them:

​The female great horned is flying well and uber-aggressive; she just needs to pass the live prey test and she’ll be ready to go soon!

The two adult owls, the great horned and barred, are antsy but not quite flight pen-ready.
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The vultures are beginning to show lots of black under that down, and their wings are pinning out nicely. They’re also greedy little rascals—with crops almost bigger than their heads (meaning full), they’ll still growl and demand food that they then drop in the box and snack on later.