Viera Wetlands

Here's a great egret head.

Well, I'm in Atlanta right now and the drought is still on--the grass is very brown and there are water conservation notices in the hotel rooms. However, as I type this, there is one heck of storm raging outside, so maybe this is a sign for the better? So, time to finish up the Florida entries:

So, Viera Wetlands (again, just a fancy name for a wastewater treatment area--yeah, I mean sewage) wasn't just about the cool bittern loaf. No, there were other birds there, they were just all over shadowed by the cool brown heron like bird. What else could be so cool?

Brown ducks! This is an exciting duck since it can be found in most places around the US. It's a relative of black ducks and mallards and that plumage in the above photos is about as flamboyant as it gets for the mottled duck. I can hear Non Birding Bill smirking all the way in Minnesota.

The wetlands were chock full of herons and egrets. Above is a flock of cattle egrets threatening to block the road as we were driving through.

Here is a pair of sandhill cranes near the road. Again, I would like to point out how birds in Florida are mellower than birds up north. There's no way sandhills would stick near the road if a vehicle slowed down near them. How close were they? For one thing, I didn't digiscope this photo. Here's another comparison:

That's my buddy Clay Taylor in the driver's seat watching the cranes--these birds just don't care about humans. Maybe it's the vacation atmosphere in Florida? Everybody, even the wildife is chillin' out.

Here's another anhinga, drying out its wings in the sun while surrounded by blue-winged teal. It kind of threw me to see it with blue-winged teal, a species we have nesting in Minnesota.
Here is an adult anhinga (note the white on the wings). The anhinga is another kind of celebrity bird for me. I remember staring at their illustrations in my field guides when I was a kid, in all the books, there was at least one showing it with its wings out. It's fun to see them when I am in Texas or Florida.

Speaking of birds throwing me, here's a savannah sparrow. I wondered if I was driving Clay crazy by second guessing so many birds. I kept asking things like, "Is that really a savannah sparrow I'm seeing?" I'm so used to seeing and hearing them in open areas around the Minnesota, I wasn't expecting to find them lurking in the grasses of some wetlands in Florida.

The birds weren't all brown at the wetlands. Check out this striking fellow--kind of like a coot in drag. It's a common moorhen. These birds are very grunty, belchy and farty sounding. They make a variety of noises, but it's the grunty sounds that stick in your mind.

The moorhens were mixed in with the coots. Many of the coots formed a tight raft and fed in the water. With the black bodies and heads, accented with the white bills, it was kind of hypnotic. Here's a video:

Here's another Dr. Seuss looking bird. This is the glossy ibis. Viera was just fun, everywhere you scanned you find something cool, if not on the water, then in the grasses and shoreline. There's something for everyone. And you might be surprised what you find as you're scanning:

Oh hey, what's that on the shore? Why, it's an alligator. And this wasn't the only one, they were ALL over.

Now, these birds must like life on the edge. Here are two sizable alligators and near them on the shore is a glossy ibis and a few moorhens feeding away. Are these birds just not the brightest bulbs on the tree or does their diet make them taste so nasty that an alligator just doesn't want to bother.

You could get fairly close to the alligators. Above is a member of our group named Andy getting a photo with his point and shoot. I noted the alligator was longer than I am and decided to digiscope it from where I stood behind Andy (if the gator decided to come our way, it would get Andy first).

Not a bad photo and much like the bittern photo, I could only get a head shot of the gator to fit in my field of view. Perhaps, that means I'm too close to it.

We did see some non lethal animals like this red-bellied turtle and a river otter that came running out of the water and was entirely too fast for me to digiscope.

Here's a rabbit--this poor thing was frozen and hunkered to the ground, there was a young red-shouldered hawk hunting nearby and the rabbit was using its camo ability to evade becoming a mean for the hawk. One of the guys on our trip was a Florida naturalist and he said that this was a marsh rabbit. They can swim, although, I wouldn't advise it with all the gators in the water.

Peregrine 568 Update

Last week when we last checked in on the Injured Peregrine Falcon 568, she was a tad jumpy and we weren't able to peek in. Two of The Raptor Center Vets, Lori Arent (that's actually Lori on the home page of the TRC website) and Jane Goggin emailed over some photos when they did a check up on her:

As you can see, her feisty spirit has not diminished. Lori and Jane were worried because anytime anyone came near the flight room, she would get jumpy and all the other peregrines in the flight room with her would start flapping around. One of the things that make peregrine falcons so fast are their incredibly stiff wing feathers. If the peregrines continued to fly around willy nilly in the flight room, that would risk breaking those feathers and increasing the length of their stay at TRC. (Incidentally, when someone tells me that they had a raptor show up at their bird feeder and it ran on the ground, dove into a bush chasing birds, that is a big clue that it's NOT a peregrine falcon--a peregrine would break too many valuable flight feathers hunting in that way--however, a shorter winged and softer feathered Cooper's hawk is perfectly designed for that type of hunting).

Jane and Lori decided to do some switching around of the peregrines in the flight room to see if that would make all the birds more calm. They removed a male and put in a different one. When I arrived on Tuesday for my shift, Lori said that it would okay for me to peek through a corner of the cover on the flight room window to see how she is doing:

That's Peregrine 568 on the right--note how skinny the foot is on the left--that's where the feathers were plucked to operate on her injured bones. Now she is upright, hanging with another male tundrius peregrine falcon and staying relatively calm. There's also a third falcon--a large female which you can't see from this angle. From this point, she will have to be exercised and her flight progress closely monitored to make sure she will be in peak condition for release. Since she has not flown since she flew into the nets at the banding station, her flight muscles have atrophied a bit. She will need conditioning to get used to flying and hunting on a daily basis. Between that and waiting for the feathers on her leg to grow in, she will more than likely be at TRC until spring.

All in all, things are looking very good.

Peregrine 568 Update

Well, it's time for an update on that feisty Peregrine Falcon 568. I went down into the clinic and learned that she is now out of a recovery cage and moved into a flight room with three other peregrines--two females and one male. Alas, I could not get a photo of the room because Peregrine 568 is very jumpy and even lifting just a corner of the cover over the window to the flight room causes her to jump about and thrash, inciting the other three peregrines to jump about and thrash. On the one had, feistiness is good, however there is some concern about her leg being at a slightly odd angle and her jumpiness causing some damage to her still sensitive feet.

They are going to evaluate her situation and check her legs and feet in the next few days. She may either get moved to her own room or put back in a recovery cage a bit longer. Let's all hope for the best.

In other raptor news, did y'all check over at Susan Gets Native where she demonstrates how to call in a screech owl? You may have to crank up the volume on your computer, but you can hear one calling back at her.

And also, Birder's World has wisely added girl sizes for the owl shirts. I wonder if I should get in on the Cafe Press stuff? Should we put Cinnamon on mugs? Indigo buntings on bumper stickers?

Final Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival Post

Really, it is. I swear. At least for this year.

Banding was slow today at Carpenter Nature Center and I spent the morning talking to the Development Director while she repaired nets. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe some banding while at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival. Once again, a Sunday morning trip was scheduled to watch bander Mark Conway (that's Mark in the above photo banding a kiskadee) and his assistants band birds at Los Ebanos Preserve.

Here's a closer shot of the kiskadee Mark was banding. Something interesting that I learned was that all kiskadees have a yellow gape.

I took a photo of one earlier in the festival and I had never noticed that before and thought it was a young bird, but all kiskadees of all ages have that yellow outline at the corners of their mouths.

The first bird of the morning wast a gray phase eastern screech owl. The banders weren't targeting owls, but they had the nets up at not long after dawn and this bird was just flying through and flew into the net.

Here is a long-billed thrasher which I hear way more than see in when birding in South Texas. That bill is not deformed, that's the way they are.

The best part of the day was getting to see a green jay up close. Last year they banded quite a few and I figured that green jays were par for the course.

But Mark said that they don't get green jays in the nets very often as they are members of the corvid family and very intelligent. They had not banded at Los Ebanos recently so the birds were just not used to it.

Mark said that this set a record for the most green jays that they have ever caught in a day: 9 green jays banded--and I never got tired of them.

Another exciting bird of the day was an olive sparrow--one of the hardest birds to see, you hear them quite a bit. I was glad to have a chance to get this photo because, frankly, my earlier efforts were just plain sad:

Behind all those tiny branches lurks an olive sparrow at Llano Grande. This was not bad, just finding an olive sparrow sitting on a branch long enough to aim your scope and camera is feat within itself.

Here, Mark is holding an orange-crowned warbler. These guys are all over in the trees in south Texas this time of year. They're not an easy warbler to see, so when a guide finds one, I think people hear warbler and hope for an exciting/colorful bird. As they search and search, they'll say, "I see a small brownish bird..." Yep, that's the orange-crowned. It's not even as orange as a blackburnian warbler. You may be wondering to yourself, why this bird is called an orange-crowned warbler...

Here, Mark demonstrates the name. When you hold and orange-crowned warbler about six inches from your face and blow on its crown, you can see a kind of orangish color on the underside of the crest feathers--see how obvious that is? Another one of those birds that was named when bird watching was done with a gun, not with binoculars.

Here are one of the many great-tailed grackles in the area. When you get them in the sun, they really are a striking bird. You can hear great-taileds singing all over Harlingen, any time of day--even all night long when they are roosting in the trees--how do those guys get any rest?

They do sound incredibly mechanical as opposed to musical. I wonder how that adaptation sounded, and what must have early explorers to North America have thought hearing those things chatter all night in the trees above them?

There was also a very exciting bird into the nets--a common yellowthroat, which to Mark are not common but something to study in depth. He thinks that there is an isolated population of yellowthroats that could be a subspecies that he calls the Brownsville yellowthroat. Will there a split some day separating this species of yellowthroat from the rest of the common yellowthroats seen around the United States? If so, Mark will have been instrumental in that research.

Okay, this doesn't have too much to do with banding, but there were quite a few anoles running around during the banding program and this guy with the wavy tail caught my eye. I wondered what happened to make it look like that? Did appear to slow it down in its daily travels.

And so, I leave you wit one final green jay photo, because they are just so darn cool looking. I'm very excited, it looks like we will be able to go out with Mark one day on the South Texas trip next year, which would be awesome for the group and great for me to learn different banding techniques from different people.

Estero Llano Grande State Park

And yet more Texas birding goodness. Incidentally, if you have been reading these entries and thinking, "Dude, I so have to get my birding butt to south Texas!" I have been in contact with a friend of Non Birding Bill's who runs a travel agency and we are putting together a trip for next October...

I had so much fun on my field trip to Estero Llano Grande State Park on my first day of the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival, I thought I would go back and do some proper digiscoping before I had to work the birdJam booth on Saturday morning. It really is a cool park--it's new and I think over time will gain in popularity.

I wanted a chance to see and digiscope the black-bellied whistling duck without the fog. These guys were all over the park and they kind of whistle and their bellies are black--boy ornithologists must have been having a bad day--a bird that actually fits its name. Shocking.

The park isn't all wetlands. The path to the visitor center is quite lush and great for watching butterflies. Please don't ask me what kind--I do know lots of people were freaking out because some rare butterfly had been spotted but I can't remember the name. I'm taking baby steps towards butterfly id--I mean, I ranch caterpillars but I don't drop everything to see a hairstreak. I am kinda getting more into it...I must admit that I did pick up one or two butterfly id guides. Man, butterflies have much better names than birds: Shasta Blue, Frigga Fritillary (say THAT 5 times fast), Dull Firetip (kind of an oxymoron name), Definite Patch, Confused Cloudywing--seriously, those are all butterfly names. Ornithologists, if you discover any more birds on this planet, please take note of butterfly names and come up with something creative.

The area also had some hummingbirds. I will mark off a few points from the park for not having their bird feeders filled. Guys, what were you thinking? It's a bird festival weekend, plus you have your own programs going on, how can you not have your bird feeders filled? For a new park, this is not a good first impression--empty feeders on a busy weekend? If you're trying to attract regular birder traffic, that's not the way to do it. I know some of us left feed back on that, so hopefully after the park is open awhile they will have a regular schedule to keep their feeders filled. The empty hummer feeders did put the kibosh on my chances of getting a decent buff-bellied hummingbird photo. Believe it or not, there is a female ruby-throated hummingbird in the above shot. Can you see her? No? She's hard to see? You betcha', so I put my camera to the scope:

There she is. She would fly towards the empty hummingbird feeder, test it out and then sit on the thorn, waiting or perhaps hiding from the buff-bellied, it seemed on constant patrol and ready to chase her off if she even thought about approaching a feeder.

Periodically, a buff-bellied hummingbird would show up, but it never landed in a spot that was easy to photograph. This was the best I could do.

The park did have a nice shorebird selection and after my class that I took this summer, I thought I would try my id skills. It was tough because I learned how to id shorebirds for Minnesota and the Dakotas, not Texas. But I had the time, they were fairly close and it was a good idea to practice. Above we have sleeping shorebirds, mostly dowitchers and stilt sandpipers. But time to break 'em all down and see what I can find.

This one is easy enough--a black necked stilt. Can't really mistake it for anything else.

Here's a family group of stilts. Actually, while I was digiscoping these guys, a rail flew past me. It was so fast and I only saw the silhouette, but I'm assuming it was a Virginia rail. Several soras scooted about the reeds too.

Argh! Here is where it would get tough. Okay, there's a dude in the back with light colored legs and it's smaller than the black legged dudes in front--they guy in back has to be a least sandpiper. But what are the other three? They are either western sandpipers or semi-palmateds. There bills didn't look blunt and kind of down curved--are they westerns? I'm thinking that they're westerns.

Fortunately, as I was digiscoping, I found Clay Taylor (digiscoped above). He confirmed that they were in fact westerns--wrong time of year for semi-palms anyway. Incidentally, he was there for the butterflies.

Now, here was an interesting scenario. The bird on the right is a yellowlegs with a broken leg and the other three are dowitchers. Now which yellowlegs and which dowitchers. Lesser yellowlegs are about the same size as either dowitcher, so this would be a lesser yellowlegs. Now, the dowitchers were very vocal and my shorebird instructor said that if they're noisy, they're long-billed dowitchers. Everyone who passed me called them long-billed as well. Plumage-wise, I just can't really tell. If anyone wants to add tips in the comments on your tips for separating dowitchers--please feel free. I'm calling these long-billed dowitchers.

Or maybe I should call them long-billed bullies, because they would go after any bird trying to feed in their vacinity. Note the posture of the bird in the middle of the dowitchers--puffing itself up and stretching its neck to look impressive. The injured yellowlegs was in no position to argue and soon flew off. But the bird in the middle was not finished.

It made a beeline for a stilt sandpiper (on the right). Again, notice the dowitcher craning its neck as it approaches the stilt sandpiper, major intimidation mode.

But then suddenly everybody flew off--even the thug dowitcher (that's his rump in the above photo in mid take off. I looked up and sure enough, there was a Cooper's hawk cruising overhead. The shorebirds formed a tight flock and circled the water noisily. The Coops didn't dive for any of the birds, but continued over the wetlands in search of less suspecting prey.

A few minutes after the hawk passed, an immature lark sparrow popped up to see what was going on. About this time, I needed to head back towards the convention center. I ran into Clay who was still searching out the butterflies. We talked for a few minutes and one of the visitor center staff came out and said that they had observed a bobcat lurking in the vegetation behind us. Who knew? Stuff like that always makes me wonder what I miss. How many owls do I walk under? How many coyotes cross the path behind me? How often has mountain lion considered whether or not I'd be worthwhile prey?

Injured Peregrine #568 Update

There's a video of Cinnamon and myself on Showcase Minnesota up over here.

Look who is looking bright eyed and feisty! Yes, it's injured peregrine #568! Today was just a plain busy day, I have to pack for my flight to Texas tomorrow and I had two programs back to back at The Raptor Center (the first was about 70 two year olds and then the second was a small group of senior citizens--talk about shift gears fast!). But in the middle of all that, I managed to pop down into clinic and get an update on the injured female tundrius peregrine falcon we have been following. Things are progressing well!

Here is an X-Ray that Alana took last week. If you recall from last time, they removed the large rod that was inside the leg stabilizing the bone, leaving in the two smaller titanium pins. When Alana took this X-Ray, she noticed that one of the pins had broken in two--note the pin on the bottom. That pin is located just below the healed up break. She's not sure how the bird managed to break the pin, but she decided to remove the remaining stabilizer. A tiny piece of one of the pins remained in the leg, but it will not harm the falcon in the long term (unless she goes through airport security).

The skin on the leg is pink and healthy and her feathers are growing back in (it looks much better than the first day that I saw her leg--bleh). She still has a long journey ahead. She will remain in a clinic cage awhile longer to make sure that she can move around and that the healed bone is stable. If all goes well, they will consider moving her to a flight room, but it's best to take the time to make sure everything is healed up.

All in all, very good news.

Peregine 568 Update

I got a call from Lorraine this morning. She reported that she saw a saw-whet owl in Mr. Neil's yard flying around the bird feeding station--perhaps it is the same saw-whet we found a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could have gone out to look for it, but I have to pack for my trip to Cape May, NJ--SO excited about the birding and meetin' up with all the bird bloggers and Birds and Beers on Friday night. AND! I have a bonus trip to New York on Monday and Tuesday. Maybe I'll get to see Pale Male?

I have some optimistic news about peregrine 568 at The Raptor Center. They were going to do an X-Ray on Tuesday morning, but remember how she likes to rip the duct tape off of her foot? She was at it again big time this weekend, so they did her check a day early. I didn't get to observe, but Tuesday morning, Alana gave me the down lo on what happened.

The X-Ray looked good! You can see where the bone break had healed up in the above photo and that's very good news in her recovery!

Here is the X-Ray from right after her first surgery. You can see that there is one big rod lining up the broken leg bone and two smaller roads helping to stabilize the bone. Alana said that they removed the large rod that was inside the bone, but left in the two smaller rods. They remove the rod gradually, to make sure the injury is stable as the bird gains more movement. I got a video of Alana explaining the X-Ray below--again, she's a great teacher and very good at explaining things:

Things looks promising.

Peregrine 568 Update

WARNING! This is a post about an injured peregrine falcon we met earlier this month. This post covers some of her recovery. Some photos might be a tad gross for those who may be eating or have a problem with needles. Just an FYI.

Alana Shrubsole-Cockwill, the vet overseeing the injured peregrine falcon I've been blogging about, called me this morning to let me know that she was going to check on the bird to see how she was doing. When I arrived at The Raptor Center, Alana was working on a red-tailed hawk with an injured wing in the above photo. After she checked the injury, she extended the wing to keep the muscles from permanently contracting.

The red-tail was passage (first year) and huge! That's Steve Sutter hold her up. He volunteers in clinic at TRC. Clinic volunteers come in once a week, feed and clean birds in recovery and hold birds while the vets check them out.

Steve's job is to get the falcon and then when she is under anesthesia, he still holds onto her feet--on the off chance she isn't completely under, she won't grab the vet or flail around and risk further injury.

Some good news is that the bruising has gone down! Some may remember from last time that the bird's leg was bright green from bruising. The flesh looked healthy pink and you can see pin feathers growing in (her leg feathers had to be removed before surgery--kind of like when humans need to be shaved on a body part about to be operated on.

Something I didn't mention last time was that the foot, just below the break was red, and Alana mentioned that it might be some type of vascular compromise--maybe the blood vessels were damaged when the bird flew into the nets or transported or as a result of the injury. If you look at the photo of the leg from last time, you will note just below the green that the foot was red. Today, all the redness was gone, so the blood flow is good. After that, Alana moved the leg around. I asked if the moving the leg around was for the same reason she was extending the red-tail's injured wing, but she said she was checking for stiffness. I got a video of her extending the leg and talking about what she's doing:

I will say this, Alana does a great job of explaining what she's doing, she's a good teacher. Since I'm an education volunteer at TRC and not a clinic volunteer like Steve, I don't know all the lingo and what they are doing and why. She very naturally will explain what she's doing and do it in way so that you don't feel like a complete dunderhead.

She made sure to clean the spots where the pins holding the broken leg in place and then she took a look at the peregrine's toes:

Because the falcon was going to be putting more weight on her good leg as opposed her broken leg, care had to be taken to keep her from getting bumblefoot and her good foot was wrapped in surgical and duct tape. But what is a bored falcon to do when it can't migrate and hunt and has to sit in a dark box all day--why try and rip at the tape off her toes! Note the mangled mess above. Alana removed the tape:

The bottom of the foot looked good, no signs of bumblefoot! You know how I love to smell birds? Alana told me to smell the falcon foot. I have now experienced that bad bird smell--her feet were stanky! Which is weird because birds don't sweat like humans so it's not like she had sweaty toes in gym socks. It's a combination of the foot being wrapped, probably getting some food bits and poop in there. Alana washed it off and rewrapped the toes. Who knew birds can get stinky feet?

If you look at this photo, you can see little tabs of duct tape--the tabs are there on purpose. She's going to pick at it anyway, might as well give tabs to keep her busy to keep her from ripping it all off her toes.

One thing I haven't mentioned that you may have noticed on the red-tail and on the falcon are the envelopes on their tails. By sliding this over the raptor tails, this prevents them from breaking tail feathers during their recovery. They are in small boxes to prevent them from moving too much too soon. But sometimes an antsy raptor is going thrash about in the clinic cages, so this just helps protect those important rudder feathers.

Here's Alana and Steve with peregrine 568 at the end of her exam. She's perkier, her weight is up and she doesn't need to be hand fed. Alana is going to do an X-Ray next Tuesday to see how the bone has healed and to determine what the next stage will be in her recovery process.

Again, if you enjoy following peregrine 568's story, please consider contributing to her recovery at TRC. I've yet to meet a raptor with health coverage and TRC relies on donations to treat the over 800 birds they see in a year.

Injured Peregrine Update

Quick update on the injured peregrine falcon, I went to check on her and she was resting. Steve, one of the participants on the bird trip that picked her up called The Raptor Center and got a rundown from Dr. Jane Goggin:

"The Raptor Center left a message on Friday, Oct. 5, about Falcon 568. Jane said our girl was doing pretty well at this time, but it would be 3-4 weeks before the splint would be removed. She'll probably spend the winter a TRC. Jane suggested calling back in a couple weeks for an update. Sounds pretty good to my untrained ear and her appetite certainly seems fine."

I'm at TRC every Tuesday and will do a check in. They have my number to give me a call with any developments if something happens when I'm not there. Honestly, no news at this point is good news. Here's hoping that in a few weeks, I will have photos of her upright in a flight room.

In other news, no one has stepped up to claim ownership of the eclectus. TRC has tried everything--all the local parrot organizations, parrot stores, vets, Craig's List and no one is coming forward as the owner. I wonder if something happened to the actual owner? When you see the bird, it is in excellent health and well trained. Someone spent a lot of time, energy, love and money on this bird. A bird like this can outlive the owner. I'm wondering if the actual owner died and the surviving family not wanting to keep it, let it go outside--sounds crazy, but I've had people tell me about doing this kind of thing before. They know nothing of birds and they think it's a tribute--to set grandma's bird free. Who knows. Again, there is a long line of folks at TRC ready to take him in, I just wish we could find out who it belongs to.

Falcon Medical Care

First up, a quick public service announcement:

Anyone missing an eclectus parrot in the Twin Cities area? One was found on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota and is now hanging out at The Raptor Center. If you're missing one, call TRC at 612-624-4745. The bird does not need a foster home or a new home, just looking for the owner.

A WORD OF WARNING: THIS POST MIGHT GET GROSS FOR SOME READERS! I was allowed in TRC's clinic this morning to observe a post operative exam of the injured falcon. We're going to see some of her injury, it might be kinda gross for those who have trouble with injections and medical procedures. There's not a copious amount of blood but there is a photo of some nasty looking bruising. If you think this might be too much to read while eating, quit reading after the broad-winged hawk photo.

Here's a new bird we're training in for educational programs at TRC, it's a first year broad-winged hawk. Don't let that cute cock of the head fool you, this bird is not sweet, it's a tad brain damaged. This bird was shot as a youngster in the nest in the Twin Cities area and still has the BBs in its head and somewhere in its back--hence the head tilt. We suspect that it has vision loss in its left eye (and possible hearing loss). When you look at it, the lights are on but there doesn't appear to be anyone home. I'm not sure if the shooting occurred by a bored kid or by someone who didn't take kindly to hawks nesting near their feeding station. However it happened, it was illegal and a shame.

When I came to TRC for my volunteer shift this morning, I did a quick verbal check to see if the peregrine we brought in on Saturday was still alive. I do educational programs and am not involved in the clinic. I know they are always busy in the clinic and didn't want to be underfoot to view the falcon myself. But, Alana, the vet working on the falcon, offered to give me a call when she was going to do a post operative check on the bird so I could take pictures and learn more about the injury.

They put the falcon under anesthesia in order to clean her surgical wounds and inspect her without stressing her out. Here is the X-Ray they took of her Saturday night. She had a compound fracture of her right leg. Know one know for sure how she got it. Did she bounce off of a car windshied? Did she crash land on pavement while hunting a pigeon? Did she hit a window on a building? Who can say?

Alana showed me where the fracture had pierced the skin and she had sutured that up. The bird really couldn't be in a better place for its injury, TRC specializes in avian orthopedic surgery.

So, Alana, cleared the feathers away from the leg (they don't shave 'em, they have to pull them out) and inserted pins to reset the bones. This is the falcon's X-ray after her surgery. There's a rod inside setting the bones straight that is connected to pins that go through the skin and are attached to another rod outside the leg to help stabilize the fracture while it heals.

Here's what it looks like from the outside. See the blue piece? That is the outside rod covered in surgical tape. If you look close, you can see the pins going into the skin that connect to the rod on the inside. Alana cleaned up that whole area to prevent infection. Note how green the flesh is on the leg? I asked if that was some type of medication--that's not what that is. That is bruising--raptors bruise green! I never knew that. So, for her type of injury, that color is normal. Alana said that some people will see that on a bird and mistakenly think it's gangrene but it's just a normal bruise. And I thought human bruises looked gross. Alana also said that when she first saw it, that told her the injury was three to five days old.

Feet are very important to birds--they use them when they are not flying. Even when sleeping, birds stand on one foot. Since this peregrine will be putting all her weight on one foot while her broken leg heals, she is at risk for an infection called bumblefoot. To prevent that, Alana put on some surgical tape to help cushion it the good food. They will keep a close eye on the foot when they check her bandages to prevent infection.

After her wounds were cleaned, the peregrine was given fluids. She had been starving and her weight was low. The above photo is the peregrine slowly coming out of anesthesia. Alana told the clinic volunteers that when she was awake, she was to get forty grams of quail. She wanted the bird to be hand fed to insure that she ate all the food. The volunteers carefully weighed out the quail and cut it up into bite sized pieces. The hope is that while you are holding the bird, someone can just hold forceps with meat to the beak and the bird will eat it. However, being in captivity and held by a human can stress the appetite right out of a bird and sometimes you have to force feed them. The volunteers were hoping that they didn't have to force feed the falcon. Here's a video of how she reacted to food:

Needless to say, she did not need to be force fed. If you're wondering why the dish is held in front of her, then removed, and then brought back to her, that's to help stimulate her to eat. If the meat just sits there, after a bite or two, the bird can lose interest and just play with the dish. But when the dish is removed and suddenly reappears with meat, the bird's food instinct kicks in and it takes a bite. Kind of an ADD thing. Sorry to everyone who can't view video. I tried to get a photo:

She's so fast that it came out blurry, but you get the idea.

This is the inside of the crate she is staying in. The clinic volunteers made a sort of donut shape for her to lean into so she doesn't have to put weight on her feet, but when she was put inside, she decided to stand. I didn't get any photos once she was in, she had more than enough paparazzi for the day and needs to recover.

And I should mention that she is getting all of this first rate medical care without health insurance. I've never met a raptor who has any kind of health policy. TRC survives on donations, and if you are feeling inclined to spend a few dollars, please consider donating a buck or two to TRC in her honor. She's case number 568.

I will make updates on her progress as I hear about them--good or bad. She still has many obstacles to overcome, but if a bird can survive the first twenty-four hours in the TRC clinic, their chances of recovery greatly increase. If she does end up having to be euthanized, at least she's being made as comfortable as possible and being well fed as opposed to starving over several days with a painful injury.