Owls ‘r’ Us

LWR received four new owls this week, all barred owls.

The most recent barreds were all nestlings. The century-old tree their nest was in fell. The callers reported the tree trunk was over a pond and the babies were in a cavity over the pond. The tree had fallen the previous afternoon or night, but they didn’t discover the babies till the following day. When they arrived at LWR, their little bellies were empty (unlike other birds, owls have bellies, not crops), so the parents had not attempted to feed them in the downed tree. They’re eating well and doing great here at LWR.

A brancher barred came in a couple of days before that. He’d fallen and while the finders could see his sib in the nest, no adults ever came down and their dogs were starting to take an interest in him. When he arrived at LWR, he purely stunk. He reeked of death, making me suspect he may have branched too soon because of either a dead sibling or a rotting prey carcass in the nest. The finders said his sib was out of the best but perching when they left but reported the next day they’d seen the parents around the remaining sib. He doesn’t smell now and he’s self-feeding so that’s always a welcome break from rodent slicing and dicing.

The great horned trio are now in the raptor flight after the red tail’s release earlier today.

The red tail had a gorgeous release. For a change of pace, we released him over the hay field but he banked and flew back toward the pasture. And the crows were quick to notice and harass the poor fellow, who could’ve easily had a crow snack had he wanted to. Y’all, I’m so proud of this bird—he’s the one who came in unable to stand, flare his tail or spread his wings, and just look at him now!

All three adult screeches are in the mini-pen now. The “older” red phase was quite dramatic in his facial expressions at having company.

The red phase female keeps a permanent look of sheer panic on her face, poor baby. I’m sure she’s still traumatized by her experience of being trapped in the cavity with her destroyed eggs for six hours.

The gray phase just hates everybody. While he’s holding his head up properly now, he refuses to perch or attempt flight. I think his balance is still off.

And the mourning dove is still being stubborn about self-feeding.

Of course, it wasn’t all babies and releases; wildlife rehab seldom is. LWR had two hummers come in. One died within fifteen minutes of intake; the other seemed to have much better prospects but died overnight.

A young adult male osprey came in after hitting a guide wire. His right wing was shattered just above the wrist and vet Peggy Hobby and I agreed that euthanasia was the most humane course for the bird. He also had a broken toe that had healed in the wild and was developing bumblefoot (basically a pressure sore) on it—see the circled area on the foot photo.

And an adult great horned came in, quite literally blind in one eye and couldn’t see out of the other. His left eye was milky and inflamed, with a dilated and unresponsive pupil, and his right pupil was also dilated and unresponsive. Because having an adult great horned is always good to provide an example for the young ones, I talked with colleague Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends Raptor Rehab about using this bird for that purpose but we both agreed given the condition of his eyes this would be unfair to the bird, as he couldn’t see to eat—and therefore couldn’t really serve as an example to the young trio, either. He was humanely euthanized.

As an aside, those of you who’ve commented on the website in recent months may have noticed I haven’t approved the posts or responded. Weebly has stopped sending notifications when someone comments, and they hid the pending comments quite well in their last update, so I just found where they placed them. Your comments have now been approved and posted but I’m not going back through three months of comments to reply to each of them. Now that I know where Weebly’s “improvements” relocated things I’ll resume replying in a timely manner, though!