Little Amelia has finally taken flight. For all of you who have not been following her story, she is a Southern Flying Squirrel and came to me at just 20g as a baby. When she left she was over 60g and was so happy to be free. I miss her and really worry about her, but I know that she is happy to be flying through the forest!

I was worried about this little gal as she had real problems "flying" (not really flying, it's actually gliding, which they do by spreading out their arms and legs, making the loose skin between them spread out like wings). And several big leaps ended up in her plopping to the ground despite flying lessons- where we practiced flying by her being thrown into the air! She also couldn't seem to figure out how to run on her wheel (seen below sitting on top of it). I thought that perhaps any neural damage she had sustained as a baby might have impaired her abilities.

However, I learned that not all flying squirrels actually do fly/glide! Slowly, she became better and better at running and leaping and was soon getting around the house like a little superstar at top speed. And she began to use her wheel quite well. And then I knew it was time to send her on her way.

I wish her all the best and she know she can always come back if she needs to. I've heard some flying squirrels "talking" late at night from my window and wonder whether it might be her. She was really a dearheart to have as a patient. Goodbye little sweet Amelia and fly well!

Well, the time finally came for the little Southern Flying Squirrel  to be released! After making 8 special southern flying squirrel houses, with all the appropriate measurements (see www.flyingsquirrels.com) and special thick softwood, the boxes were hung in the Wild Things forest. His door was opened a few nights ago, and on the second night, he disappeared, into the Wild Things night! Be well little squirrel!

Special houses!

Thank you Maren Connolly for helping me hang the houses! Dr. Connolly is a wildlife & zoo vet at Cornell and helps a lot of the Wild Things patients.

I really thought that the little guy was going to miss his wheel, but when I opened the door, he finally decided to go...on the second night anyway! 

Meet Wild Things' newest patient- a male Cottontail rabbit. This darling little fellow is suspected to have been hit by a car. He has head trauma, and it is uncertain to what extent he will recover. After doing poorly for a few days at the hospital, he started eating well, and in fact I am just off now to buy a scale to monitor his daily weight progress. There are several signs of brain injury. First is that he is very calm, second is that he has a pronounced head-tilt to the left side. Head-tilt is often a symptom of head injury as damaged neural tissue can injure eye/muscle reflexes that keep the body aligned. Finally, though his eyes appear to be undamaged, it appears that he may have some degree of brain-blindness. In other words, the part of his brain that encodes vision is injured, so his eyes may be seeing things, but his brain isn't registering it. His pupils also aren't responding as well as they should to light, which means that the pupilary reflex, controlled by central cranial nerves, is impaired. You see this same injury in humans. He will stay at WTS for a month or so and during that time his progress will be monitored. If he does not show signs of improvement a long-term home will be found for him. Until then, I have just put his cage outside in a safe place so that he can enjoy the sounds & smells, if not the sights, of outdoors!

A big thank you to Heather Sanford, my awesome petsitter, who donated the awesome rabbit hutch. I bet you didn't think it would be used so soon. It was was donated in memory of her very loved little bunny Buttercup!

What about this little Dark-eyed junco?? He had a hard window collision and quite a fall to the ground! You can see that he is "mouth breathing," which is a sign of stress in birds. However, as discussed on the WTS webpage, "What to do if you've found an injured animal," lots of birds who collide with windows fly off and are OK. This junco was down for a while- about an hour. I called the vet and was discussing his symptoms, looked out the window and he had flown away! A good ending!

All the turkeys seem to have disappeared into the woods. I haven't seen but one since I returned. This is a picture of hte little one who I have seen a few times. It looks like a young (<1year) male. Probably too old to be in a group with females, and perhaps not yet old enough to join a male group....though it is a bit strange that he is on his own. To the let is a picture of King Turkey, as discussed a few weeks ago. Little turkey has a long way to go. I would think that he will probably get to be King's size in 5 or so years.

WTS first daffodil. It's about time! Wild Things is on a hill and is very shaded, so I think that the spring is a couple of weeks behind up here. It's been great fun having the windows open and hearing all the bird song, and munching/opening seeds at the bird feeders. The other night I woke up and heard Bandit eating- I know it was her and she has a distinctive chew noise!

Saw the first Chipping Sparrow a today! Actually 2 came to my feeders. Welcome home little ones! These little red-heads can easily be distinguished from other small sparrow-y birds because of their lovely red-cap!

Also, I am happy to report that I'm almsot positive that I saw a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker in the Wild Things woods yesterday. I wonder if it was the female that was at the feeders all winter- I haven't seen her for about a month- or perhaps it was her mate?! I couldn't make out the head very well, but I saw a lovely yellow tummy!

Nursing Mama picture for Suzanne as requested! OK, not the greatest picture, stay tuned for another, but hope this will satisfy until then. In person, it was pretty darned obvious anyway!

At present the female pileated woodpecker is hanging from this suet feeder. Why she seems to prefer this one over the lovely expensive large one I bought for her is anyone's guess!!

Hello! Who's this??? It's the little flying squirrel in the sunchine! I've moved his cage outdoors so he can get acclimatized to the outdoor temperature, before his big release, probably this weekend or next week depending on the weather!

Surely no-one's forgotten about the little Southern flying squirrel is who has been staying with me all winter! Here he is poking his head out of his tube. He really is quite a lovely little creature, very silky and loves running at top speed on his wheel and then flying off of it. He also has a completely flat tail that is used like a rudder during gliding. However, he is a bit prone to weight gain, so he has been on a diet. Below is a picture of him semi-stuck in his tube due to the possible extra girth. It worries me that he might not be able to glide with the extra grams!

All winter long he has been nice and cozy in his little hay ball bed. I gave him snuggle fluff material and a stuffed toy, all of which he promptly brought into his new den. But where will he go and what will he do when he is released in the coming month???

...well Mister Brad Pitt you may think that you are alone in building homes for the homeless, but take a look at my Easter activities! I will make about 8 of them and place them around the woods so little squirrel will have plenty of nest area- they usually use several nests at a time.

These houses are nice and safe from other animals and dry. Now I just hope that the neighbours keep their cats inside- cats are well known to catch and kill these little guys.

I got a bit dusty during construction. And I wasn't quite strong enough to drill holes for entry- I need to get a bigger drill!

Pileated woodpeckers are just such amazing birds! Here is a picture of a female at WTS (males have a bit more red around the beak). And their call sounds like crazy laughter- you can hear it in the woods, but you can't always see them. Apparently Woody-Woodpecker was modeled after them. For any of you familiar with the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, long thought extinct, but supposedly seen a couple of years ago in a swamp down south, the pileated woodpecker is the bird that critics say that people are really seeing. Who knows! A few months ago I bought a very fancy feeder for these birds, but it wasn't until yesterday that one showed up to use it. I was so excited! Today she came back! .... with her parents! That's right, there was 3 of them- so amazing! I'm pretty sure that it was a family as one was male and two were female, and one of the females was smaller...however, I am not familiar with their family structure, so I can't say authoritatively that they were REALLY a family!

There were plenty of other wild visitors to WTS recently as well. One young male White-tailed deer has started coming all on his own. He showed up with another young doe last week, but this week he has been coming every day on his own. I've heard some guns go off in the woods, and I hope that his companion wasn't hurt. Deer are herd animals, so it always makes me see a bit sad to see them, especially young ones, on their own. Sometimes at the clinic we get very young babies that were born late in the season, "late-droppers," whose mothers have been killed by hunters. Hunting season is supposed to begin at a time when the babies are old enough to fare for themselves, but late-droppers still need their mums months into the hunting season.

The deer has been seen with a rafter of Wild Turkeys (that's the name for a group of wild turkeys!)! This gang is made up all of young males. about 7 of them appear to be 6-18months old, and 3 of them are probably 18 months and older, perhaps to about 36 months...though I don't know enough about turkeys and their social structure....but would love to, they are such great animals! Thomas & Theodore, otherwise known as Tom & Theo are the leaders of the pack. These two young males (they are 2 of the 3 older ones) have been coming to WTS, just the two of them, everyday for at least 6 months. Just recently all these other young males have joined them. One other time Tom & Theo brought lady turkeys, but they never came back with them. Again, I would love to understand the reasons behind this interesting social structure, but as far as I know their behaviour has not been studied in a robust way. More on T&T later!

And what about our little friend the flying squirrel! He is doing great! He's become more and more at home in his new cage and loves snuggling and sleeping in his hay ball that I filled with all sorts of fluffy soft stuff. He is also a wheel CHAMPION!!! I'm so glad that I got him a nice big wheel to run on, which he does, non-stop for 10minutes at a time. Here is a picture of him, doesn't he look fake?! This morning I heard what I thought was him scrambling in the walls. Great, I thought, he's escaped again! but no, he was all cozy in his hayball....this was someone else in my walls having a great time...and for all I know he met someone when he escaped, and now has a flying squirrel friend that comes to visit him! I may have to name the squirrel Steve McQueen.

And salamander, btw, appears very happy with his worm selection and nice damp chilly aquarium. Whatever works! :)

Finally, Cornell WHC... everyone is doing great! Both screechies  are recovering really well and eating on their own. Another screech owl came in with a screwed up eye, but we are hoping that it will heal with treatment. Why do so many screech owls come to us with eye injuries??? I don't know! But this is one thing that I would love to study if I can convince a Cornell professor to adopt me as a graduate student (I'm in the process of transferring departments). I can't imagine that these little owls are bad fliers and always fly into things....is it possible that something in their diets may be affecting their vision or flying ability, and this leads to more collisions? Maybe. The question is what comes first? The collision with resulting eye injury? Or an eye injury/dizziness/weakness that causes a collision?

Herodotus is doing great and has gained another 20g! I think they may perform his surgery to remove his eye this week...and I've told the vets that I want to be there! So, stay tuned....

And Mister Red Tail hawk . he's still angry as ever! but is eating well, and we may test his flying ability this week. The picture of him here shows him on a perch with a "tail-guard" on. This protects their tail-feathers, which can take months to grow back if they are damaged.

Wild Things has its first 2 residents! The first is a Southern Flying squirrel, as seen in the picture at left, and the other is a Spotted salamander, which can be seen below. They came to me from another rehabilitator whose has about 60 animals over-wintering with her (she’s been doing this a lot longer than me, and even takes bear cubs!), so when I bought her one of the Cornell Barred Owls (NOT Herodotus!) to stay with her until its release, I took these two little fellows off her hands. The squirrel is a recovering cat-attack victim, who will be released in the spring, and the salamander was disturbed in hibernation, so will stay with me until it is warmer and can be released.

Both animals are healthy, but because of the extreme cold outside (though today has been very mild) and because they are both now used to indoor temperatures releasing them now might very well be fatal. The squirrel also has no supply of nuts to help it through the cold months, nor does it have other squirrels to nest with for warmth (flying squirrels often do this during the cold winter months).

We got back safe and soundly (also bringing back a couple of owls to Cornell for ophthalmology check-ups), and I spent about an hour setting up the little squirrels cage. I was so tired after driving and working at the clinic all day, but I set up a flying squirrel palace! Complete with a wheel and lots of fun hiding places. I put him in the cage and closed the door to the room (I’m keeping him in my study as the real WTS room is still un-insulated). During the evening I thought I heard some noises, but thought that it was my imagination. Well, this morning I went in, and several things were knocked over, but there was the squirrel in his cage. Hmmmm? House mice? Well, as I was trying to figure it out, the little squirrel (about the size of one’s palm), woke up, ran around the cage, and then ran right out, having no trouble at all getting though the small spaced bars! He disappeared behind some books and disappeared! But I suppose that he was going in and out all night, so I wasn’t too worried.

But I did know that I needed to get another cage! So, thanks to all the generous donations, I bought a fine bird cage that was on sale and some bird nets in case I had to catch him. I brought back all the goodies and set up Palace #2. Then I set a humane mouse trap with peanut butter and sunflower seeds next to his cage, and left the room a few hours ago. I want to go in and see if he’s been caught so badly, but I know if he is still running around, I risk scaring him back into hiding….so I’ll give it a bit more time and check on him before I go to bed (they are nocturnal, so he is probably just waking up now, just before my dinner).

Updates on Herotodus and the other patients at Cornell too, but I’ll write more on that tomorrow.

As for the wildlife around WTS, I have had 3 little redpolls at my feeders recently (see picture at left- they are the one's with the red  feathers and black markings on their faces, the other bird is a goldfinch), and a female sapsucker appears to have settled in for the winter. The former have come down from the Arctic Circle for the winter, the latter should be wintering down south by now!