The temps have been positively fall-like, and we had the outer bands of Hurricane Sally sweep through Wednesday and Thursday, with clouds moving in Tuesday and still hanging around Saturday—but it was still mostly a good week for wildlife at LWR.
Let’s start with a “minor miracle” bird—Friday, a caller reported hitting red tail with his truck, resulting in the bird getting caught in the grille. These types of vehicle vs. hawk encounters seldom end well for the hawk, so I wasn’t real optimistic when he showed up with the bird. Surprisingly, there were no fractures, and the red tail was alert, aggressive and angry at being confined. Upon further questioning, the rescuer clarified that he’d slowed to turn off the road just before the hawk hit his grille, and that’s probably what saved the hawk from serious injury.
Let’s start with a “minor miracle” bird—Friday, a caller reported hitting red tail with his truck, resulting in the bird getting caught in the grille. These types of vehicle vs. hawk encounters seldom end well for the hawk, so I wasn’t real optimistic when he showed up with the bird. Surprisingly, there were no fractures, and the red tail was alert, aggressive and angry at being confined. Upon further questioning, the rescuer clarified that he’d slowed to turn off the road just before the hawk hit his grille, and that’s probably what saved the hawk from serious injury.
So I boxed him up to give him a little more time to de-stress and gather his wits and went about my business. Didn’t take long for the red tail to stage a jailbreak and wreak havoc in the rehab room, at which point I decided he was probably good to go. He flew strong and straight! (And it only took half an hour to straighten up the mess he’d made during his jailbreak...)
The mourning dove was also released, this morning. Sorry for the crappy video; he flew off to the far reaches of the camera’s zoom and kept flying farther away when I tried to move closer for better images.
The hummer’s leg seems to be healing nicely; the wing is still very iffy.
The only euthanasia this week was a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk whose left shoulder was broken and badly displaced. We thought we loaded the X-ray onto a flash drive at Smalley’s Friday but it didn’t load properly, and I didn’t realize it till they’d closed for the weekend.
The great horned owl really needs to be outside, but I have red tails in both the raptor flight and the mini pen.
However, both red tails are slated for release later this week, when the river drops and I can reach my preferred release site.
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