A wonderful release and some sadness.......

It's cold, wet and gray here today....yuck! I think I'd like to migrate south.

Our three Great Horned owls, Willow, Boo Boo and Aretha are all doing well. I've included photo updates on Willow, who will need her eye removed and Boo Boo who is also blind in one eye, but that eye can stay in place since it is not deteriorating at this time. As soon as he kills successfully, he can go, but it's just to wet to attempt that right now. Hopefully very soon, however.

Boo Boo is the one with the cloudy looking eye. Aretha just needs time maneuvering in the flight.

We recently got in another Great Horned owl, this one from Lake Powell down in southern Utah. He had been electrocuted and was found floating in the lake. How he survived the initial electrocution is just amazing. Unfortunately, what an electrocution does to ones insides is usually fatal and he died two days later. I hope we provided him with some peace and comfort for his final hours.

A few weeks ago we picked up a Western Grebe. Amazing creatures, those Grebes. This little guy, like most of my Grebe cases, went down while migrating.
They migrate at night and cannot stand and walk on land, they need water, so if they see a wet road or parking lot at night, with the moons light or street lights, this can appear to be a body of water and they come down and BANG...hard pavement. Then they are stuck. Sometimes they can become injured hitting the ground, but usually they need and exam and a day or two just to monitor their behavior and then put back onto a large body of water.
They need around a hundred feet of water to take off, running along until take off. It's wonderful to watch. We released this little guy out on Utah Lake, just in the nick of time. The lake was freezing over quickly. I took him there because others of his kind had been spotted the day before by a local birder, so that was the best choice for him. Here Connie is putting him in the water at a boat ramp.

When I get calls for these types of birds, the finders always say the bird has a broken leg (since they can't move on the ground). They are built to dive and float for the most part!









The last post I had mentioned a new Red-Tail hawk coming in. She had a compound fracture in her left wing that was two weeks old, yes, two weeks....idiot people. When she finally arrived, I made plans right away for surgery. Just as I knew would be, the bones had already started to fuse together. My vet was able to re-break them and spread them back into their correct position, in spite of all the calcification already building up around the broken areas. This took more time than a normal surgery of this type that didn't have all of the "healing" already taking place. This was just too much for the bird and she died after the surgery. She never came out of her anesthesia. The people who found her didn't do right by her. They fed her, but this could have been prevented. This is why there are laws prohibiting what they did. She needed to get medical help immediately, not two weeks later!

I need to take a moment to yell...............idiots!

Last, but not least,
Keep your bird feeders full and remember, during the cold months, water is just as important as the rest of the year, so provide a clean, shallow source of water for your backyard birds. They'll appreciate it!

Debbie

Just when you think you've seen it all..............

Well, I've been mentioning a Red-Tail hawk the last post or two. I even posted a couple of pictures prior to our trip to the vet's office. We named her Patience. We actually have another female Red-Tail Hawk who we took to our vet's office in Payson for surgery today, but that's another story. This update will be about Patience.

She came to us from the next county over. Her eye was horrible. One of the most horrific eye injuries I've ever seen. Just as a side note, everyone has THEIR thing and mine are eye injuries. They give me the willies! We kept cleaning the outside of her eye and expressing some white goo from the torn eyeball itself. I could not do anything for her regarding this eye until we got her weight up as she was near death at intake. She obviously had been on the ground for quite some time, unable to hunt and was starving and dehydrated. To add to her condition, she had parasites all over her, which is common for a bird in her condition, unable to care for themselves, then the 'bugs' take advantage of this. This in turn caused her to be anemic as they were feeding on her.
She was too weak in the beginning to start the medication she needed for the parasites as it is a very harsh drug and she was just too 'down', so it had to wait.

Gradually, with a lot of subcutaneous fluids, tube feeding, antibiotics and pain medication, she became stronger, heavier and less anemic. We started the anti parasitic drug and then got her up to our vet in Salt Lake for her eye. The day we took her up, they took her right in and removed the eye. I took a lot of pictures and I'm hoping to get some of those posted. Dr. MacLaren said all the 'white stuff' in the eyeball was infection. When they got in there and started to clean out the infected bone as well, which there was quite a bit, they found the cause for all of this damage. She had been shot! Some little punk, used an air gun on her and the cartridge was up near her brain. They got it out and saved it for me. That poor bird.

For the first few days after her surgery, she was very unstable, but if you had just lost half of your face, you would be as well. We added a second antibiotic and put her on stronger pain meds and over a couple of weeks, she was back to her normal self.
I took her back to my vet in Payson to get her entire body x-rayed as I didn't know if there might be any more of those cartridges somewhere in her body. Thank God there were no more.

I turned the cartridge that had been removed during the surgery over to Wildlife Resources Law enforcement. The person who did this will probably never be caught. Pisses me off. This magnificent creature tortured like this. Thank goodness she was found by someone, although near death, we were able to save her!
She is now free and flying like she should. She was ready for us to be out of her life. I hope she does well and since she is an adult, she knows how to kill and has done that many times already.
Be free Patience, and stay away from idiot humans!

Also, just a brief update on Miss Moon, our little Screech owl. I had a full body x-ray done on her and her fracture isn't healing very timely. I still have her confined and her food has more bones in it now and she is eating 100% on her own. This is wonderful for her and us. Both the radius and ulna were broken. She still looks like a good release candidate here in the future.

I love a story with a happy ending.....
Debbie

Owls, Owls, Owls.....

It's bitter cold here. I hope all migrating things are where they need to be. I'd like to be somewhere warmer as well, but I don't migrate well, so here I am!



I mentioned a new little Screech owl on the last post. We've named her Miss Moon.
She came in from Moab. We sure get a lot of birds from Grand and San Juan counties. Moab is about a 2 hour drive, one way, so as you can see, we cover a lot of miles doing this work.

It looks like she had been hit by a vehicle as most of our patients are. We included her in the trip last Friday to the vet's office in Salt Lake for the eye appointments. That's a 2 1/2 hour drive one way. She obviously had head trauma and one of the eye's wasn't 'progressing' like I had hoped. The pupil was not getting any smaller but staying dilated and fixed. Not good. The other eye had been that way, but was now reacting normally, still, both eyes needed examined as with head trauma, there may be a detached retina in a 'normal looking' eye.

She does have a closed fracture in her left wing, but now that the swelling has come down, it feels like it is lined up pretty well. I still want it x-rayed just to get a good visual on it.
The vet at Eye Care for Animals in Salt Lake feels that there is no longer vision in the left eye and I would have to agree. She doesn't follow you with that eye and movement on that side of her head doesn't get a reaction. She still may be releasable, but time will tell. We currently have her on pain medication but that should end shortly. We are still force feeding her as she doesn't want to eat on her own. That could be the result of several things, including the pain medication.




So we also took in two other owls to the Eye vet for a follow-up visit. One owl had come in from Moab, but had been hit in Sevier county. The finder picked him up and took him (the owl) back to his home in Moab and then called the wildlife agency here in Utah. He too had been hit by a vehicle and had trauma to his left eye. He also is blind in that eye and we are hoping that it stays limited to that one eye. His scenario was identical to the little Screech's. His other eye was effected, but quickly returned to almost normal, but is still in danger of detaching, so we are holding on to him for a bit longer, hoping he will get past the point of serious concern. He sure is full of fight and doesn't like his 'visit' any longer! I'll look to see if I have any photo's of him and if so, I'll post them. We have been calling him Boo-Boo. Oh, I guess I should mention he is a Great Horned owl.




The other owl is also a Great Horned owl, but a female. She came from Sevier county as well and was also hit by a vehicle. She too had eye problems. This has been the year of eye problems for us! Man of man. Just about everyone has had some sort of eye injury, but if you were smacked around by a truck or something, your eyes would probably show some problems as well.
Good for this owl and the other Great Horn that they neither had any broken bones.
This owls continuing problem is in her right eye and it's obvious, she is blind in it. The eyeball itself is also shrinking, meaning that it is probably going to have to be removed. I'm not sure if I will try to find an educational facility for her or not. There is a lot of differing of opinions, when it comes to owls and their survivability in the wild with a missing eye for a lot of good reasons. Their eyes, in comparison to other raptors are huge, taking up a good portion of their skulls, so this can throw their balance off terribly. There is also concern over how it effects their hearing as the two (eyes and ears) are placed right behind the other, so this is not going to be a quick decision, but it never is. We take each patient on a case-by-case basis. We named her Willow as she came from an area near there is a creek called Willow creek. I will be posting her on our sponsorship page as she will be with us for a while and at great expense.

I am going to save the update on the new Red-Tail hawk for the next posting. She went to the eye vet Friday, along with the three owls. She is going to be a special project as well, requiring time and money.

If you are someone that donates during the holidays to projects or causes close to your heart, then please consider us in your donations. We are 100% funded by donations. Our patients are wildlife, not pets, so there is no one to send the bill to. The wildlife agencies merely drop them off to us and THAT is rare in and of itself. More often we get a call to 'go pick them up', whether they are being held somewhere or were simply spotted by a passerby and we need to go and find them. This requires a reliable vehicle, gas, time, volunteers, kennels and so on, just for that portion alone. Help us help them.

Thank you,
Debbie

Moving right along......

This has probably been the slowest we have been in a couple of years. Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty to do, but most of our patients have been released and there are just a few requiring more time until we can determine the best situation for them.





Leonard, our female Great Horned owl that had been electrocuted was finally released. I would have liked to released her further south, but the reality was, I wasn't sure when that would or could happen and every day in captivity when she didn't need to be here wasn't benefiting her.









We released her in Moab, just south of town.



























I'm also including photo's of a release of a Red-Tail hawk we did. This female came in as a mystery bird from Moab. Very thin, near death, and no visible signs of trauma. Her feathers were in horrible condition and we could clearly see feather lice had been feasting on them and her as well. We started with supportive care and then I took her in to my vet's office in Payson, Utah and got some blood work done and an x-ray.




We were surprised to find lead shot in her. She had been shot some time ago, however. The wounds were completely healed over and not visible in her intake exam. Once we knew it was there, we felt around the area's where the x-ray showed the shot and we couldn't even feel it, that's how healed it was.
One of the tests I wanted performed was a West Nile Virus test and it came back positive. So I suspect that is what brought her down.




The decision was made not to remove the shot as it was not a part of the digestive system and this is where the lead poisoning takes place. Where the shot was in her body posed no long term threat to her life, so we left it there and focused on the West Nile.
Once she started making progress, she took off, health wise, in leaps and bounds.





She became strong and aggressive quickly. I did have her vision checked since West Nile can cause significant visual damage and even blindness but she had no problems in that area, so once she was strong enough, we released her. Yeah! She was an amazing bird!


















We recently got in another Red-Tail hawk with trauma to her right eye. She was very thin when we picked her up and we weren't sure she would survive the night, but she's gaining weight nicely and becoming very strong and feisty. I suspect her injuries were due to her prey fighting back or another predator trying to catch her. This does not appear to have been caused by an impact with a vehicle as are most of our cases. She sees the eye vet this Friday, but we are confident that the eye will have to be removed. I'll keep you posted on her. I've included a couple of her intake pictures.




















We also got in a little Screech owl from Moab. She appears to have been hit by a vehicle with trauma to her left wing and head. She is suffering from a concussion, so we have been treating her for that and she is progressing nicely.


Enjoy the photo's....
Debbie