Rainy weather brings in the owls

Middle Georgia experienced heavy rain this weekend, and the barred owls were apparently out in force—calls started Sunday before 9am and continued until 6pm, with three intakes resulting.

Barred 1 had a right wing fracture. The humerus was snapped and the two ends were nearly at right angles, with one *thisclose* to piercing the skin to form an open fracture.  This was one of those cases where x-rays would have been redundant; it was obvious from a simple manual exam that the bones were too badly displaced to heal for flight. He was humanely euthanized.

Barred 2 also had a right wing fracture; the wing rotated nearly 360 degrees—not fixable and no need for x-rays in this case, either. Euthanasia was required.

And barred 3 had severe head/neck trauma, mostly likely from a head-on collision with a vehicle. He couldn’t even keep his head up and sprawled with his wings splayed out to the sides. He also required euthanasia.

And yes, lemme tell y’all right now having to euthanize three birds back to back sucks big time. It’s never pleasant, but THREE birds in less than an hour leaves you reeling, I can promise. The sole comfort is that none of the three was left to suffer by the roadside until it died, becoming a magnet for possums, vultures, crows and other carrion eaters who then might also have become roadkill.

Given the predicted crappy weather for this past weekend, I proactively moved the falcon back inside for a few days. She’s not happy inside, as evidenced by her dinged cere, and will be moved back outside this week.

And the red shoulder would like nothing better than to be outside but his wing hasn’t healed enough to move into a flight yet.

Remember, there will be no update next Sunday, Christmas Eve, and our last update of 2023 will be on Saturday, Dec. 30.

Merry Christmas, y’all!