I am so happy to report that Herodotus' eye surgery went great! In fact, it went so well that he is headed off to a raptor rehabilitator tomorrow. At this rehabilitation site there are flight cages and even areas where they can see if he can learn how to catch live prey with one eye. One day I hope to have facilities like these!! I so wish that he could come to Wild Things, but presently I do not have all the special flight cages, and I'm in the process of applying for my Federal Fish & Wildlife Service bird rehabilitation permit. I am going to miss him SO much, and marvel at how well his recovery has gone so far. He's gained almost twice his initial body weight and is almost 800g. And he has gotten very spunky! You can see here that he is not too pleased at all at having his picture taken! He fluffed up to look big and scary!

In other clinic news, all of the sceech owls are doing well, and are also on their way to local rehabilitators who can test their flying and prey catching abilities. We admitted a Great Horned Owl this weekend. What a lovely animal! And so much bigger than teh other owls we have had in this month.She was quite thin and very depressed, but with no obvious injuries. Her blood test revealed that her blood was only about 12% red blood cells, when it should be about 50% or more. After hooking her up to an intra-osseous catheter (like an IV, but it goes into the bone, the humerus in this case), We located a healthy owl for a transfusion by this morning, by which time her red blood cells were own to 8%. Sadly, before we could give her a transfusion, she died. It is strange to see such a low red blood cell count with no obvious signs of external or internal injuries or bleeding. She will go in for an autopsy to see whether she was poisoned. Perhaps by a rat poison or something like that.

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.

After 2 days of what sounded like a fantastically fun time within my walls, the tiny squirrel has been caught! I know he looks a bit sorry for himself in this Have-a-heart trap, and I know that he was doing just fine living it up in my walls, but I have a feeling that as a licenced wildlife rehabilitator I'm supposed to have a bit more control over my residents! (The salamander, btw, is behaving very well...though at some point every night he makes a mess throwing dirt into his water bowl!)

Sorry little fellow! Btw, I'm pretty sure it IS a little FELLOW because he's a bit stinky and I think males have very active scent glands. Also, it appears at superficial glance, that he has all the male anatomy...though I didn't dare pick him up to examine him as I'm sure that would have led to him escaping again!

Meanwhile, I stopped by the Cornell wildlife clinic this afternoon to check on the patients there. Herodotus is up to 709g! He came in at just over 400g-- a normal Barred owl weighs about 800g-- completely emaciated with bones poking through his skin, so I am very pleased about his present weight. His blood work from a couple of days ago showed that his white cell count is normal, which means that his eye infection is under control. Yippee! But the vets will wait to remove this dead eye until he is in slightly better body condition- probably sometime nest week.

Sadly, but happily, Lucy Goosey will be leaving us. She is doing so well that we are sending her to a rehabilitator who can keep her over-winter until it is warmer. As she stretches and uses her wing more and more there is a good chance that not only will she fly again, but she might even migrate again. Her broken leg has healed very, very well, though she is a bit duck-footed on that side, no pun intended.  At least she's not chicken-toed as that might really mess her up! :p Her persistent cough is much better, and an endoscope of the trachea confirmed that the tissue looks better and plaques that were present on the trachea walls have begun to resolve/break down.

This is another recent Cornell patient. It is a little Eastern Screech Owl. It appeared to be a bit cross-eyed and its eyes were cloudy. The opthalmology vets found that it has bilateral cataracts. This means that its vision will probably become more and more impaired. However, we found a rehabilitator who wants to put this animal on her "educational permit" (something I hope to get at some point!), so it will have a home.

We get lots of screech owls with eye problems. At the moment at Cornell 2 are waiting to have irreparable eyes removed. However, screechies can survive in the wild with one eye as long as their hearing is intact. Despite their impressive looking huge eyes, many owls rely more on their ears to hunt than their eyes, and studies of this little owl species has found that individuals hunt very well even if they only have one eye. They use their hearing to triangulate prey location- really impressive stuff, just check out any neuroetholgy text-book to learn more!

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!

I was taloned this morning by a Red-tailed hawk. This hawk tuned up at the Cornell Wildlife Heath Center (WHC) a few days ago in someone's truck; they had found the bird on the side of the road eating road-kill and seemingly unable to fly. The hawk was in great body condition but some swelling over the wrist joint, and few X-rays later revealed that it has some sort of dislocation and reshaping of the ulna. It's unclear whether this is an old injury and the bird has been doing just fine, or if it's a newer injury and it will effect the bird's ability to survive in the wild. All I know is that almost 12 hours later and the base of my right thumb aches! The bird is full of energy and very "bright, alert & responsive", or "BAR" in veterinary speak, which is good, but makes it a handful! I was taking it out of its cage to administer its medications, and it grabbed the fleshy base of my thumb. it happened quickly, and there are just a few small incision marks and little blood, but damn, those talons must have gone deeper that I realized! Ow!

In the cage next door is my dear Christmas angel, Herodotus. We don't name animals, for many reasons, but this lovely Barred Owl somehow begged for a more personal identity than case 740411. He was brought in just after Christmas after someone saw him fall out of a tree. He was in really bad shape, appeared to be missing an eye, and was almost euthanized on the spot. However, he had no broken bones, so I asked if he could have 24 hours. We had had to put down 3 other owls over Christmas who all came to us with badly broken wings, and I wanted to try to save at least one. Well, less than 24 hours later after intense fluid therapy, his eye had inflated. It was clearly beyond repair, but at least it meant that he was rehydrating. Apparent dizziness& disorientation on day2 led us to suspect that the infection in the bad eye was spreading to the central nervous system, but after 12 hours of antibiotic treatment, he was standing up again. When an animal is as emaciated as Herodotus, you can't feed them too much or they can die. So, little by little we fed Herodotus with special formula, very diluted at first, and now a week later he is eating bits of mice all on his own! See picture!

And this is a picture of Lucy Goosey. Of course, it is uncertain if she IS a she, but it seems like she somehow! Lucy is a Canada goose, who came to us around Thanksgiving with a broken leg and a broken wing, both on the right side. Both were repaired by the superstar Cornell wildlife vets, and look how well she looks after 6 weeks! She has also slowly come to think of the treatment area at Cornell as her home and often wanders about if her cage door is open. this is good physical therapy for her, and she is getting better by the day. As someone who has had to deal with orthopedic surgery, I am very sympathetic!

Sadly, today we had to put down a paralyzed Red-tailed hawk and a Canada goose whose entire humerus (that's the arm bone) was sticking out of its wing. Both of them had no chance of recovering a life with dignity. After all, it's not just about if these wild animals can survive, but if they can survive and have a good quality of life. Every time Lucy walked by this other goose's cage he would check her out. I find that species recognition somehow very wonderful.
We also received 2 Eastern Screech Owls today from rehabilitators who need to have their severe eye injuries checked. Stay tuned on that.

And another Barred Owl is just about ready to go to a rehabilitator, the step before being re-released. She came to us a few weeks ago with severe wing lacerations and nerve damage that affected her toes; they couldn't move on their own and without toes and talons, raptors cannot survive (NB: raptor beaks may look super scary, but it's their toes and talons that are the real danger!). But after a few weeks, and specially designed shoes, this bird is doing great and has become a real demanding, beak clacking (that’s what owls will do if they are annoyed with you), mouse eating wild animal...and that's the goal! We call her Click-Clack or Clacky! I plan to bring her to a rehabilittor this weekend, who, in exchange, will give me two more owls to bring to Cornell (they need eye check-ups too- owls seem to have a lot of eye injuries), and send me back with my first patients for Wild Things Sanctuary: a Blue-spotted salamander & a Northern flying squirrel! yippppeee!