Well, this is a bit embarrassing…

As you’ll recall, last week’s big story was the pair of sandhill cranes spending a few days at the LWR B&B. No other flocks were located, so with the aid of Georgia DNR game warden Rodney Horne, this past week I released the sandhills on private property, where they seemed quite ecstatic to be free. Rodney and I thought it was a good release, anyway. 

That evening they were still hanging around the release site, but the next morning they’d disappeared. I was happy; the cranes were on their way to Parts Extreme North to breed. Mission accomplished!

And then…Saturday, four days after their release…they showed back up. Not at the release site. Nope. Back at LWR. Now, how they managed this is beyond me, ‘cause when they left here for the release site, they were in boxes in my car, and it’s a long, winding road to the site and then a long walk through the woods to the exact release spot—all in boxes for the birds.

So when my nephew Alex alerted me that they were in the field across from his house bright and early, while I was still feeding all the other LWR guests, my immediate reaction was swearing. How was this possible?  As soon as all the morning “rounds” were handled, I walked up to see for myself.

Yep. “My” cranes. I walked into the field, while they ignored me and ate. Then I asked them what they were doing back. And this is where it got positively surreal.

At the sound of my voice, the sandhills’ heads popped up in unison and they started toward me like dogs. What the…?

Okay, maybe they were hungry. But they were eating! Still… “Are y’all hungry? Okay, I’ll be right back with some food. Stay right here, okay?” I started to walk away, back home for food.  And then I turned around. The sandhills were hot on my heels, for all the world like puppy dogs following their master. My jaw dropped.  They’ll stop in a minute; they’re not really following  me.

Oh, but they were. Through the field, down the road, and into the back yard, where they hung around all morning. I put in calls to the International Crane Foundation and Operation Migration, hoping they could give me some clue as to what to do next, while taking photo after photo of the cranes. They were quite cooperative. And this being the weekend, both ICF and Operation Migration were closed…They’ll have interesting messages come Monday morning!

After dinner (lunch for you city folk), Alex, Daddy and I were going to get the doors up on the flight pens; they’d been working on the garden all morning, while I’d been amusing myself by taking more photos of the cranes than any reasonably sane person should. I figured once we got started bumbling around the yard, the cranes would fly away.

Nope.

They’d moved to the edge of my yard, where it adjoins the hay field, and were happily digging in the muck remaining from the last rain. 

Then, while we worked, they moved farther along the edge of the hay field, into the shade, where they napped contentedly through the remainder of the afternoon, only leaving when we were about done with the flight doors—and then only heading back to the field they’d been in that morning, and not long there. I started up that way to check on them after we were done with the flights, and they were already in the pasture between my parents’ and nephew’s houses, headed back to my yard.

This time they didn’t stay long; it was getting close to dusk. They ate a bit, got restless, and suddenly flew away—I presume back to their release site several miles away to roost for the night, as they headed back in that general direction.

And bright and early on this overcast, drizzly day, the guests who refuse to leave were back. Apparently  the accommodations at LWR are ideal, with “his’n’hers” sinks…

Now, the question on everybody’s mind at this point—mine included—is, “Are these birds imprinted?” The answer? I don’t know. They hang around people like they might be but they don’t want to be touched, so they may be just severely habituated. The one thing that does seem to be fairly certain is that their “migrators” don’t work!

Even without the drama the sandhills introduced to the week, it was one of those weeks.

Early in the week, LWR received a barred owl who’d spent three days with an individual not licensed for raptors. The owl, an adult male, had been pulled off a barbed wire fence and his left wing was chewed up from the fence. This individual gummed up the feathers with ointment, slapped a wadded, non-sterile paper towel under the wing, and proceeded to wrap it against the body as if it were a fracture—with some sort of REALLY sticky tape that pulled out wads of feathers when I pulled it off to properly treat the wound.

The bird hadn’t eaten in at least three days when he came in; he was on the verge of a nasty infection from the half-arse job done on the injury, and we still didn’t know if anything was broken, so off to Smalley’s Animal Hospital we went.

Luckily, the x-ray showed no fractures, although you can clearly see a huge fleck of metal still hung in his feathers from the fence. The skin was ripped off the bicep, though, and the wrist was also raw. Vets Peggy Hobby and Richie Hatcher recommended that I allow the poor owl to preen all the ointment out of his own feathers as he felt like it, rather than us adding to his stress and pain by attempting to wash it out while his wounds were still so raw.

Now that he’s on meds to prevent infection and is getting fed, his wing is looking better and he’s more alert. See how much brighter his eyes look? (The black gunk in the feathers is the ointment, which it’ll take him forever to preen out…)

It’s gonna be a long haul; his wounds are nasty. But we’re reasonably sure he’ll recover.

Unfortunately the turkey vulture caught in this leg-hold trap wasn’t as lucky.

Game warden Rodney Horne called the day after the barred owl came in and asked if I could take a vulture that he’d received a call on and was on his way to attempt to capture. The caller said the vulture flew into his yard dragging a leg-hold trap. When Rodney arrived with the bird, he’d already removed the trap and said he had the difficult task of explaining to the caller, who was infuriated that anyone could do this to a bird, that the poor vulture could have flown five miles or fifty yards with the trap on his leg; there was no way to determine where it had come from so there was no way to prosecute the person who’d placed the trap.

The foot was nearly severed; there was nothing to do but end the vulture’s suffering humanely.

And then, late in the week, this first year red-tailed hawk came in. She’s a small female who was in a less-than-optimal environment for three days after being found by the roadside, so when she arrived at LWR she was quite traumatized, as these photos clearly show.

She still flinches  if I make sudden movements around her. As for her injuries,  her pupil reaction in both eyes is sluggish, so there’s still some lingering head trauma, and she appeared to have capillaria on intake, so we’re treating for that. Her appetite is excellent (inhaled three mice this morning!) and she’s perching except when I go to feed her, so I’m fairly optimistic about her recovery.

The cedar waxwing, three weeks out, is better but not flight-ready yet. I’m giving him one more week, even though most coracoid fractures heal to allow flight in three weeks. He’s not giving up, so I won’t give up on him just yet.

The cat-attacked squirrel that was “gonna die anyway” has nearly doubled his intake weight in the past week and his lower incisors have come in. His eyes should open in another week or so. Ain’t it grand what proper meds can do?

And as I mentioned earlier, my father, my nephew Alex and I got the doors hung on both flight pens, so now it’s just the little detailing stuff that’s left to do: fill dirt and perches, etc. I’m not sure who was happier to finally get to this point, me or them! Those flights sure do look good with doors now, though…