With fall right around the corner, injured first-year birds start filling rehab centers everywhere. LWR is bustin’ at the seams at the moment, and the calls keep coming.
Where to start...let’s start with last week’s screech with the potentially broken wing. As luck would have it, it’s merely dislocated—see the x-rays below of the normal left wing and the dislocated right wing. Given the already fragile nature of bird bones, this is a toughie—twisting and popping it back into place could actually result in a shoulder fracture. Vet Peggy Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I discussed options and decided supportive care was the best option, allowing the muscles and tendons to gradually pull the wing back into near-normal position. The wing is actually looking less droopy and he’s able to extend it to assume threat stance, so it may be working. Below you can see the “fun” involved in getting photos of screeches when they go into “bob and weave” mode, too...
Where to start...let’s start with last week’s screech with the potentially broken wing. As luck would have it, it’s merely dislocated—see the x-rays below of the normal left wing and the dislocated right wing. Given the already fragile nature of bird bones, this is a toughie—twisting and popping it back into place could actually result in a shoulder fracture. Vet Peggy Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I discussed options and decided supportive care was the best option, allowing the muscles and tendons to gradually pull the wing back into near-normal position. The wing is actually looking less droopy and he’s able to extend it to assume threat stance, so it may be working. Below you can see the “fun” involved in getting photos of screeches when they go into “bob and weave” mode, too...
Today a first-year sharpie with a right leg fracture came in. He’s rail-thin and his scruffy tail feathers would indicate he’s been down a while. The leg itself seems fairly stable, as if the fracture has already started healing, but it’s right at the joint so we’ll wait for x-rays to make any definitive statements.
The former stargazing red tail is STILL awaiting good weather for his release. And most of next week also looks wet, so... We need at least three days of low-to-no rain chances, and last week it rained nearly every other day; this week shows no clear skies till around the end of the week.
The red tail with the swollen eye still has a blood clot sitting right on the pupil but the eye itself looks much, much better. Swelling is down and it’s pretty clear aside from the clot. He’s eating well and I may move him outside into the raptor flight this week, rain notwithstanding. The raptor flight has a sheltered area for inclement weather.
The third red tail, with the hand fracture, is in the mini-pen after staging three jailbreaks and wreaking havoc each time in the rehab room. He’ll remain there until the hand heals well enough for the raptor flight.
The great horned’s eyes still look weird, with dilated pupils and the right pupil still misshapen, but he’s finding his food when I hide it under the paper lining his box to test his ability to locate it, leading me to think that as weird as they look to me—and to vet Jim Hobby—this may be the norm for the bird. I mean, he’s finding that food... And they might look “normal” again once he’s fully over the head trauma.
The red shoulder is alert, aggressive and eating well as he recovers from the soft tissue damage to his elbow.
And the vultures are still hanging around, sometimes together, sometimes separately. How often I see them seems to depend to a great extent on the weather and whether they can find carcasses in the woods. They know the LWR diner is open if the wild pickin’s (not possessive; apostrophe replaces the ‘g’) get slim.
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