The usual mixed bag

Last week saw lots of calls, few intakes, several releases, and, of course, some deaths.
​
Let’s lead with some good news, shall we? The cat-attacked bluebird, after escaping several times while I was putting in fresh mealworms for him and flying strong and straight as he eluded me, was released. Apparently it was just a badly bruised wing after all.

The flyers were released; not one hung around after the cage door was opened the first night. They were ready to “git!”
​
While the red tail will still need follow-up x-rays soon, she’s in the mini-pen for now. The fresh air and sunshine have eased her antsiness a great deal and she can hop from perch to perch and from the ground to the lowest perch, so she’s happy for the moment. That wing looks as if it might not have healed quite properly, though. We’ll see…Waiting for things to return to some semblance of normal before loading her up for a vet visit.

​Tuesday night a Northern flicker came in; the couple who brought him had heard his distress call and found him behind their workshop. He had a minor neck wound but was alert and well-fleshed. I medicated the wound, started antibiotics in case he’d been cat-attacked, and put him to bed for the night. The next morning he was dead. As y’all well know by now, this is one of the most frustrating aspects of wildlife rehab—the deaths for no apparent reason. His wound wasn’t deep enough to’ve caused death; it wasn’t inflamed or hot to the touch like a snake or spider bite, and he appeared perfectly fine the night before…

And yesterday, three birds came in, a late-nestling great horned owl (GHO), a late first-year Cooper’s hawk, and an adult pine warbler.
​
The GHO was another case study in frustration. He seemed alert but his mouth was white-pale—not good. His initial poop was the sort of chalky white rehabbers recognize as stemming from lack of food. However, he was reluctant to eat—definitely not normal for a GHO, especially a young one. Over the course of the day, feeding him every couple of hours or so, I managed to get five small mice in him, but his poop after the first one had me worried: it was thick, dark and tarry—the usual sign of internal bleeding. Now I began to worry that perhaps his parents had fed themselves and their babies one or more poisoned rodents, and this poor baby was the sole survivor…and he was becoming more and more lethargic. By 3:00 this morning, when I fed him his last small mouse, I was convinced he wouldn’t be alive come sunup. And he wasn’t. And it hurt my heart. 

​The Coop has an old shoulder fracture that began to callus in the wild. Although I know it’s a lost cause, I’m gonna try him in the raptor flight anyway, just to confirm for my own peace of mind that he really cannot fly, and then he’ll likely need euthanasia.

​The pine warbler’s right wing is broken, and there’s a puncture wound on top that would suggest a cat-attack. He’s on oral meds for that, but the wing itself looks pretty trashed. I can’t tell for sure; he was brought in with the injury fresh and still bleeding last night, so the swelling hasn’t gone down enough to actually do anything more than topically medicate the wing at this point. I hope I’m wrong, but it’s not looking too good for him at the moment.

Hopefully next week will prove less lethal for wildlife. Lord knows I certainly hope so…