…with a trickle rather than a torrent, which is just fine by me! In case you’re scratching your head in confusion, let me clarify: orphan (or baby) season has begun, but thankfully not with a bang.
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There are still adults coming in, as well. Last week LWR received a robin who’d more than likely been cat-attacked. He was alert and active, despite not being able to fly and having a nasty wound near his cloaca (his butt, people, his butt!), so after a quick trip to Smalley’s, where we x-rayed to make sure the wound wasn’t from a BB or pellet gun and started antibiotics, I took the poor bird back home.  Vet Shelley Baumann and I were cautiously optimistic that the robin would survive; unfortunately, he didn’t make it through the night.  Soft tissue damage doesn’t show on an x-ray, so there must have been internal injuries that proved fatal, although we saw no signs of this. That’s one of the frustrating things about wildlife rehab—sometimes animals that look as if they have an excellent chance of survival just keel over, and we don’t know why because we don’t know the history of the animal before it was found and brought to us.
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A few days after the robin’s untimely demise, I got a call from a local school about a cardinal who’d hit a window. Normally a window strike, if it doesn’t break the bird’s neck, just calls for several hours’ rest in a quiet, darkened room, which I usually recommend. Something told me to go pick this bird up, though, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts. I’m glad I did, because she’d whacked the window hard enough to bloody and bruise her eye. This female cardinal would need a couple of days’ confinement, until the swelling went down in her eye. She has since been released and was a happy little bird when she was able to fly away.
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Then the babies started coming…three gray squirrels, siblings, about 5 weeks old.  The two females were eager eaters from the get-go; their runty brother was a little more reluctant at first but has since made up for lost time. Their eyes opened yesterday, but I generally give them a few days to adjust to their new vision before I start blinding them with the camera flash!
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LWR also recently received a young screech owl—according to Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends raptor rehab, Young Screech is probably about 6 weeks old. He has no baby down but still engages in baby behavior, including puffing up his feathers, bobbing his head around and hissing menacingly…the poor little fellow hasn’t figured out yet that he’s not a great horned owl!  (Adult screeches respond to perceived threats by elongating their bodies, scrunching their eyes tightly shut and assuming that since their eyes are closed, they’re invisible.)
A fourth squirrel came in this week, after being mauled by a dog. The finder actually saw the dog attack the squirrel but didn’t bother to go outside to see what her dog was after until several hours later. Folks, humane issues for wildlife aside, just for the safety of your domestic animals, it’s best to see what they’re worrying and discourage their behavior—what if they go after a rabid coon or a rattlesnake? At  any rate, this poor squirrel’s spine was snapped; there was no hope for him.

After our harsher than usual winter, it’s nice to see the weather starting to warm up and hear the birds in full chorus as they compete for mates, nesting sites and food. If you haven’t done so already, now’s a good time to begin keeping your hummingbird feeders full, as these adorably aggressive little birds need the supplemental food until more flowers, etc., are blooming.

 
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…but no babies have been blown in with those chilly gusts, thank goodness!  Orphans will probably start arriving mid- to late-month.

In fact, LWR had just one intake since the Feb. 18 update, a HBC screech owl that came in this week. Based on size, he’s probably male—remember, male raptors are generally smaller than females. 

This little guy was very lucky: the driver of the truck that hit him wasn’t sure what had collided with his vehicle, so he stopped to investigate and found our little screech dazed and confused. By the time he got him to me, little Screech was still woozy and definitely concussed, but regaining some of his feistiness. A further exam when I got him home revealed that his left eye was sluggish in responding to light and the right eye didn’t respond at all. This isn’t uncommon with concussed birds, but Screech made a quick vet visit the next morning to make sure I hadn’t missed anything critical, like a detached retina.


 
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Peggy Hobby of Smalley’s Animal Hospital confirmed that Screech’s only injuries seemed to be his eyes, and she also confirmed that this could be from his nasty concussion. Of course, the treatment for concussions is quiet, dark and rest, which Screech had with me for a couple of days, along with mice to eat when his head stopped hurting enough for him to realize that he was hungry.

After his first day of recuperation, he was opening his eyes more and was able to find a white mouse on a white paper towel, so his vision was obviously not impaired. After conferring with Steve Hicks of Bubba & Friends raptor rehab, I gave Screech another couple of days to recuperate fully and pack in the food before I released him. This winter’s been hard on wildlife and Screech, while healthy, was on the skinny side. I wanted to send him on his way with a little extra padding.

 
Returning to the subject of babies, LWR received a call just today about an “orphaned” baby cottontail. When I questioned the caller as to the rabbit’s size, I was told that he was about the size of an adult hand. Folks, for the record—and please commit this to memory and spread the gospel—any rabbit over 5 inches long is out of the nest and on its own. Unless it’s injured or ill, it does NOT need human intervention. In fact, human intervention could cause the poor thing to inflict serious bodily injury on itself in an attempt to escape: remember, if you will, that rabbits are uniquely gifted with the ability to snap their own spines when struggling with a predator—and in a wild rabbit’s eyes, a human is a predator!

 To wrap up this update and for your bi-weekly Zen, here’s a shot of a really pretty sunrise from near the end of last month.

 
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