Incoming, outgoing, and failure to launch

It was a somewhat slower week, with fewer intakes than releases and lots of stubborn release-ready babies who refuse to leave the LWR B&B.

Loons are only in Georgia during the migrations to and from their breeding grounds in Parts North, but hardly a year passes that we don’t see one or more grounded loons at LWR.

Because of their body design—breast-heavy, with legs located at the extreme rear of the body—loons are effectively helpless on land. Unfortunately, they are well-known for landing on wet pavement and such, thinking it’s water, and then, because they need a long water “runway” to take off, they’re grounded and people who find them assume their legs and/or wings are broken.

That was the case for this gorgeous loon, who was also thoroughly traumatized by the time he reached LWR: his rescuers placed him in an open box in the sun on their driveway, and the person who transported him simply dumped him unrestrained in the back of an open truck bed and drove 50 miles with the poor bird literally flapping in the breeze.

For the record, folks, wildlife—no matter the species—needs to be RESTRAINED/CONFINED in a box INSIDE your vehicle for transport to any rehabber. You’d think this was simple common sense, but apparently it’s not. So now you know.

The vulture who came in last week with the arrow through his wing and body was released and promptly disappeared; below are some shots of him while he was still in the flight. He hauled butt too fast for any release shots. Somebody was apparently not too pleased with his accommodations at LWR. Guess he won’t be leaving us any 5-star reviews…

The brancher GHO with the eye injury is back in the raptor flight, after being brought back inside because he refused to eat in the flight. He would eat in a box inside but not on a perch outside. Go figure. We’ll see how he does this week…

The flying squirrel was finally deemed ready for a very soft release, meaning she could come and go as she pleased from her caging, until she decided not to come back at all. The photo below was taken shortly before her release.

The green heron chick, unfortunately, didn’t survive.  Given his young age and 48 hours on what should have been a 12-24 hour emergency diet, I’m actually not surprised. He couldn’t manage solids at all and could barely keep a slurry of pulverized fish down, although for one day I really thought he might have a slim chance.

The mockers, cat-attacked mourning dove from several weeks ago and killdeer are still in the flight pen, along with a house finch and a slew of Carolina wrens who refuse to leave. How many wrens? Not really sure. I leave the escape hatch open and the number drops temporarily, and then when I get ready to close the hatch I do a head count to see who soft-released themselves, and they’re mostly back in. Two have pretty firmly declared their independence; four are in and out.

The pileated woodpecker is still mooching; he’s now known as “Lord God Bird”—as in, “Lord God, bird, are you even ATTEMPTING to feed yourself? Lord God, bird, do you just LURK in the trees and wait for me to go to the songbird flight?”

In all seriousness, he’s taking less and less with each handout and screaming into the yard from farther and farther away, so he IS fending for himself quite well!

This darling little Eastern phoebe was rescued from the imminent clutches of several of NINE outdoor cats; luckily the rescuer saw the neighbor’s cats after her and got to her first. Phoebes are in the flycatcher family, as that flat beak would suggest, and I’ve yet to have a flycatcher of any species who wasn’t an absolute sweetheart. 

When the caller Saturday morning said he had a fully feathered baby bird with short tail feathers on the ground and he could hear the parents fussing above him, I explained it was a fledgling who was out of the nest but still not flying well and still dependent on the parents for food. I suggested the fledgling be left alone, but the caller insisted that the bird was in danger from the neighborhood’s free-roaming dogs and cats.

When the person met me with the bird, he had lugged along three of his own small dogs, whose yapping I’m sure was all sorts of upsetting to the poor bird, who had been unceremoniously crammed into a dog carrier full of dog-hair-covered blankets. No, birds don’t have a well-developed sense of smell, but those blankets probably had dog saliva as well as hair on them, in addition to chemical residue from whatever flea treatment the person had the little ankle-biters on.

Another what-should-be-common-sense helpful hint: NO PET CRATES to transport wildlife unless they’ve never been used for household pets/stray domestic animals. A cardboard box that has never held chemicals (in other words, don’t place a bird in a box that formerly held cans of bug spray, for example) will suffice nicely. Moving boxes are cheap, come in a variety of sizes, and are available pretty much everywhere. I recommend everybody keep several sizes on hand at home and one or two in their vehicle trunks. You never know when they might come in handy!

Of course, when possible, it’s good to mix compatible birds in a rehab setting, to mimic the interactions they’re likely to have with various species in the wild. In other words, as I like to say, wildlife rehab makes for strange bedfellows.

The phoebe and jay were placed together, as I’ve had great success housing smaller birds with young jays in the past, and within 10 minutes, they were nestled cozily together…

Both these darlings will be ready for the songbird flight by mid-week or so; at the current non-self-release rate of the birds already in the flight, we may have to “encourage” some of the totally self-feeding rascals to fly the coop after the early-week rain threat is over. It would appear the LWR songbird flight is a “real hap’nin’ place”…Perhaps we should invest in a red velvet rope at the door, and hire a bouncer…