The good news is it appears we may have several days of low-to-no rain chances beginning Monday, so maybe—just maybe—we can get some birds released and others moved around this week. Y’all keep those fingers crossed!
Only one new intake last week—a late nestling/early brancher red shoulder from Pulaski County. The couple who brought him had watched the nest in their yard from the very beginning and had been enjoying seeing the babies grow. Sadly, they came in from work one evening last week to find the nest destroyed and were able to locate only the one surviving baby in the brush nearby.
He was understandably traumatized and still hunkers down in fear when I put his food in his box, but he is at least self-feeding, so that’s one less source of stress for the poor fellow—no handling for hand-feeding.
Only one new intake last week—a late nestling/early brancher red shoulder from Pulaski County. The couple who brought him had watched the nest in their yard from the very beginning and had been enjoying seeing the babies grow. Sadly, they came in from work one evening last week to find the nest destroyed and were able to locate only the one surviving baby in the brush nearby.
He was understandably traumatized and still hunkers down in fear when I put his food in his box, but he is at least self-feeding, so that’s one less source of stress for the poor fellow—no handling for hand-feeding.
The mature red shoulder will be the first in line for release this week if the weather cooperates. He’s SOOOO ready to go.
And the weather-contingent plan is to release the barred trio so the juvie red shoulder duo from earlier in baby season can go into the mini-pen. They’re about to go stir-crazy, poor things.
The barreds have indicated they’re quite ready to be free, so let’s hope, after two weeks of rain delays, we can finally give them their release.
The turkey vultures are growing and feathering out like nobody’s business. Soon they’re gonna need more space, too—already do, if I’m being honest.
And all three red tails are tolerating each other nicely in the main flight. The youngest, the one I thought was female, now looks like a small male in comparison to the other two. The now-second-year bird is going through a molt and has at least one red tail feather coming in; we’re still waiting to see if placement is an option since he’s nonreleasable. The vocal probable female who was new to last week’s update is flying beautifully. She apparently thinks she has to sing for her supper, as she does a beautiful although subdued red tail cry at every feeding—see last Sunday’s update for the best example of that. It rained too dang much last week to try for any video.
(And a month from now, when it’s bone-dry and hotter’n a firecracker on the Fourth of July, we’ll all be wishing it’d rain…)
RSS Feed
