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!
