Fundraiser goal met! And an unusually busy (for winter) week

First, a huge thanks to those who donated to LWR’s Twelve Days of Christmas fundraiser. We raised $815, $65 over the original goal of $750.

Last week was fairly hectic for an “off-season” week, with five intakes, and another just arrived today—this in addition to the raptors already housed at LWR, plus a few days of inclement weather, made for some crowded conditions for a while. I was threading my way between boxes of birds for a couple of days.
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On Monday another red shoulder came in, also with a nasty right eye injury. Looking at his eye on intake, I honestly thought it was ruptured, but after a vet visit to confirm we still had an eye to work with and starting non-steroidal eye drops, we finally began to see slow improvement. He’s in the raptor flight now. (Yeah, I know the flight pen photos are the left eye; that's the way he had his head turned when I snapped the photos.)

Tuesday, someone left a barred owl at Smalley’s, a local falconer was bringing one by there for me to pick up, and the above-mentioned red shoulder and last week’s Coop with a possible busted hip needed to see the vet, so…I went in with two boxes and left with four…

Vet Peggy Hobby agreed with my assessment that both barreds were concussed but had no other injuries; she saw no signs of a busted hip on the Coop’s x-ray, and she recommended the eye drops (above) for the red shoulder.
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The Coop is standing now but his tail still skews to the side and his balance is off, so he needs a bit more recovery time.

​One of the barreds was released Saturday; the other needs a little more time. He still has some balance issues.

The remaining barred on intake:

And Saturday:

​Tuesday evening a great blue heron came in after his rescuer witnessed him staggering in the middle of the road earlier in the day en route to work. Surprisingly, nothing was broken, although he refused to stand. Great blue herons are notoriously shy birds. This is significant because I’d walk into the rehab room to find him standing in his box; the moment he saw me looking at him, he’d hunker down. No injuries, just shy. He was released Saturday.

​Wednesday a great horned owl came in with a shattered left wing, right at the joint. He was euthanized.

​Today an adult female screech came in. She’s large enough for me to state with certainty she’s female; with screeches determining gender can sometimes be a guessing  game without a male and female side by side for size comparison. She shows no signs of injury but is still quite docile, indicating some sort of head trauma.

​The red shoulder who’d been in the raptor flight for the past couple of weeks was also released Saturday. He wasted no time leaving, as you can see in the very short video of his release.

The flyers remain invisible as long as the light’s on; after dark they rattle their pen playing. I’ll try for some red-light video of them for next week.
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Sisyphus the kestrel is still a little snot; that’s never gonna change. I’ll start looking to place him as an ed bird in January.

And the vision-impaired kestrel is proving to be a source of frustration. He’d been showing slow but steady improvement, but last week he seemed to hit a roadblock and actually started regressing—to the point I was having to hold him to feed him. That’s still the case but tonight I waved my hand in front of his undamaged eye to see what he’d do and he started and flew off his perch. I was *thisclose* to euthanizing him, but that reaction gives me hope that maybe last week was a temporary setback. His right eye is irreparably damaged; he’ll never be releasable, but if he can regain vision in the left eye, his generally docile temperament will make him an excellent ed bird.

And if you’re wondering why I’d euthanize a totally blind but otherwise healthy bird, a) federal regs require it and b) it’s the humane thing to do. Birds, other than vultures, have no sense of smell, so they can’t “sniff out” their food to eat on their own. A blind bird would need to be hand-fed for the rest of its life. Further, what kind of life is sitting in a box/cage/pen on a perch and waiting to be fed—that being the highlight of your day? There are no enrichment activities for a blind bird, nothing to make its life enjoyable or break the monotony.
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But maybe, just maybe, this sweet kestrel has a chance. We’ll see if tonight’s progress was a fluke or a sign of the return of at least some limited vision. If he can see to find his own food and eat it on his own and maybe fly a bit, he has a future as an ed bird. Fingers crossed…