A Parliament of owls...

Hey ya'll,

It's been quite noisy around here at night. The Barred owls have been whooping it up like you wouldn't believe. A vociferous Barred owl came a callin' while I was outside three nights ago, so I ran in the house and grabbed some mice that I had out to feed the kids and put a few on the hackboard. Sure enough, he flew in and did the 'Swoop N Scoop" thing! It's such a delight to have one of my former charges come in for a visit.

An early photo of one of the babes I raised this year...


My room mate and I had a nice fire going in the pit last night when one glided silently over our heads so again, I ran in to grab some mice to put on the hackboard and he zoomed right in for a snack. We decided it was the older of the two of the most recent batch I reared since he never would actually land on the platform. He is more into practicing the touch and go's. The quintessential piece of military aircraft...silent, powerful and right on the mark.



Here is "Chris", who didn't look both ways before he crossed 575 Friday night. The Good Samaritan got him to me yesterday morning and all things considered, he looks very good. You can see that the pupil in the right eye looks different than the left and that's because there is blood in the posterier chamber. While that isn't a good thing, the fact that there isn't any bruising in his ear tells me that his encounter with the vehicle resulted in only a glancing blow. Most birds that hit cars along the interstate aren't that fortunate.

I'll give him a few days for some of the blood to resorb, then take him down to my wonderful Owlly Ophthalmologist, Dr. Tracey King. She will take a peek and see what the retina is doing and hopefully, the blood will not have gotten up behind it and detached it. The analogy I use to explain this phenomenon is for those of you who have liner pools, you know all it takes is a little water to get up under the liner to float it, then it's time to drain it and install a new liner. When blood gets behind the retina and detaches it, you just can't go in and laser it like you can with the human eye because their eyeballs don't work like ours and don't respond to the needed medications in order to get back in there to reattach it. You're basically left with a boo-boo eye.

That said, he is well fleshed out and otherwise very healthy, so I know he was making a good living in the wild. Even with a bad eye, he could compensate for the injury and if he passes the live prey test, will be send packing back to his territory a few miles from here. His saving grace is that there is no injury to his ear on that side and so his ability to triangluate his supper isn't adversely affected. And as Martha says, that's a good thing!

I bit the bullet and bought a new freezer yesterday...a LOT of money for me on the front end, but only costs about 35.00 a year to operate. And big enough to put a body in! Woo-Hoo!

Feel free to forward this to anyone who enjoys wildlife. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and if you have a few dollars to spare, we sure would appreciate the Mouse Money....m.