“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”

With all due respect to the Bard, tomorrow’s not creeping at a petty pace, not in the least. Tomorrow is THE DAY. The barred owl’s pin will be removed tomorrow afternoon and then we’ll see how well this unhappy camper fares. He’s been using his wing, fully extending it, but as I cautioned last week, the bone could shatter during removal of the pin or when he tries to use the wing after its removal. At this point I’m a bit on tenterhooks as I wait to see what the outcome will be.

Below is his latest x-ray.

We also have graphic evidence of his “prisoner” mentality.

And finally, a shot of Mister Attitude himself, next to part of his perch.

A local bank called last week about a “large” hawk in their parking lot; as luck would have it, I was actually on my way to town anyway, so I was able to swing by and chase a late first-year small male red tail through their parking lot and into the empty lot next door. His wing, drooping badly, felt to me as if it had healed in the wild. X-rays confirmed that both the radius and ulna were fractured, badly displaced, and had already mostly healed in their badly displaced positions. We euthanized, of course, as this was an unfixable injury.

Birds and plate-glass windows are a really bad combo, so when a local car dealership called me to report a window strike who was alert but seemed to have wing issues, I wasn’t hopeful at all. The bird, a gorgeous adult male Eastern towhee, seemed a bit out of place in town, to be honest. These are “brush birds” who are often difficult to spot as they rummage through leaf litter in thickets and the edges of wooded areas. Let’s face it; there’s not a lot of underbrush or leaf litter at a car dealership! Georgia has towhees year-round, but this fellow may be a fall migrant from Parts North.

Vet Jim Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital and I were delighted when the towhee’s x-ray showed no fracture. His wing does droop a bit, though, so it could be badly bruised or he may have a coracoid fracture, a common injury in window strikes. This type of fracture cannot typically be felt and usually doesn’t show on an x-ray, so the general treatment is to confine the bird’s movements for a couple of weeks to allow it time to heal on its own.

Sir Towhee is NOT happy about his confinement, but he IS eating well, so we’re just gonna give him the time and support he needs to heal.

And this morning, this gorgeous red bellied woodpecker came in, also with a wing injury. His rescuers saw what appeared to be two red bellies tangling on the ground, so this fellow may have been the loser in a territorial battle. He’s rather thin but alert and typically ill-tempered, as you can see in the videos. The plan is to get his wing x-rayed tomorrow.

Finally, I’m getting ready to pull some of the better pictures from this year for use in the 2015 LWR calendar, which I hope to have available for sale by early November. This will be our final fundraiser for the year, so let’s make it a good one!