One in, one out: Maintaining the balance

It was a slowish couple of weeks: calls but no intakes until yesterday, and one release to round things out.

Starting with the release, the red tail who’d come in with a ruptured crop regained his freedom this morning. After his initial reluctance to leave two weeks ago, followed by a week of rain and high rain chances, it was good to see him finally return to the wild. He immediately flew to the far range of my camera's zoom, so these are the best post-release shots I could manage.

The mature red tail should be headed out this week; he’s gained weight and is alert and feisty.

The red tail recovering from the elbow fracture still needs some time. His fracture was so close to the joint that there was some concern as to whether it would heal for flight. Thus far, I’m not seeing satisfactory progress; it looks as if the joint may have “frozen,” meaning the callus that formed when the fracture healed has caused the joint to be immobile. I’m not willing to give up on him yet, so we’ll give him another few weeks.

The screech recovering from the dislocated shoulder is back in the mini-pen, where he’ll remain this time until he can be released. He was making good progress when I moved him back inside because I needed the space for the just-released red tail.

And the barred owl who came in yesterday has no fractures and his eyes are clear but his bruised left ear is a definite indication of head trauma. Given his increased level of alertness and beak clicking this morning, I’d guess he’ll also be released by week’s end.

Bruised left ear

Clear right ear

Hope everybody enjoyed that extra hour of sleep this morning!