Slow counter to last week’s insanity

This week was slightly less frenetic than last week, with fewer intakes and several releases. Not a bad week, overall!

First, the overwintering flyers are mostly released; we have two stubborn holdouts. They’ll decide to hit the road fairly soon, though. There’re nearly always a couple who linger longer than their eager-to-be-free erstwhile nestmates.
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And a third spring flyer came in, slightly younger than the twins. He’s currently housed with the male and the goal is to reunite all three once they’re eating enough solids to stop the female’s genital nursing. We’re gettin’ there!

​The adult barred owl was released and was so eager to leave LWR that I barely managed video and only snagged one photo. As I moved closer to try for more photos, he took flight again and I tried to video that but didn’t have the camera focused yet, resulting in a very out-of-focus second video. I’m sharing it anyway, as it does show beautiful if somewhat blurred flight!

​And the mourning doves, totally self-feeding, were released, as well. I managed to get a short clip of one of them right after he left the songbird flight’s escape hatch.

​One of the three nuthatches from last week died, leaving the Dynamic Duo aka Chatterboxes bouncing all over the place. After several days of force-feeding, food slinging and nonstop post-feeding wipe-downs to remove slung food, the little rascals started gaping, resulting in much less stress and fewer wipe-downs at feeding time. Both they and I are much happier now. The photo below was taken early in the week, post-force-feeding and pre-wipe-down. It may look adorable, but I promise you, they were huddled together glaring at me! Now that they’re gaping, they’re rarely still long enough for a photo—less stress means more energy to bounce off the walls, as it were.

They and the brown thrasher will head for the songbird flight next week and, if all goes well, might even be released by next week’s update.

The adult great horned owls are awaiting release; one may still need to hang around a while longer, but we’ll see how things look as the week progresses.
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The downy GHO is beginning to feather out nicely on his wings but he’s still a big ol’ goofball.

​The barred owls are also feathering out nicely. No photos of them this week; instead we have this video of them expressing unhappiness at being in a tiny box while I cleaned their larger box. I had to stop cleaning to capture this on video; it was too funny!

Update on last week’s bald eagle—the latest report from Kathryn at Chattahoochee is that he’s eating well and gaining weight. Good news!

And if you can believe it, that’s actually it for this week! Surprising, huh? I’m not complaining; I know things will become considerably more hectic as baby season progresses, so I’m enjoying the slower pace while I can.