Barred owl - Wally and GW update!

Millions of Bird Deaths in Nevada

Millions of Bird Deaths in Nevada

Update on Wally

...the HBCT (Hit By Chicken Truck) ....m.

Update on Wally and GW

Happy cats...part 2

A happy cat...

Heron stalking pond Pt2

Heron working the pond - part 1 of 2

FOX 5 clip

Hawk terrorizes local Atlanta neighborhood...

I can't believe the guys from Fox 5 drove all the way out here for a 30 second sound bite for a story that's airing at 10pm... :) Stay tuned!

Video clip of GW stills

Meet "GW", the very unlucky Barred owl...

Quick update...

Hey y’all,

I’m pretty good at a few things, unfortunately, marketing isn’t one of them and I keep forgetting to mention this site for those of you who do online shopping. http://www.goodsearch.com/goodshop.aspx You key in our charity’s name, HawkTalk, do your shopping at all these cool sites (that people have actually heard of) and the stores send us some Mouse Money and you get a good bargain while helping out in the process. See? Everyone wins. Cool, no?

Wally the Barred owl that got whacked by a chicken truck is remaining calm and being as polite as he can possibly be. His demeanor is stable and he doesn’t seem depressed, which is more than I can say for a lot of folks I know…

And Stacy is waiting for an appointment with the animal ophthalmologist to see how the retina in faring. He’s keeping an eye out for us in the meantime…

The newest patient is Dieter the Screech owl, and has already been in hospital for treatment for a concussion.
You can tell he still has a headache… Thanks to Vicki and Daniel for bringing him to me!

I hope you have been enjoying this wonderful weather, but I’m covered up with leaves. This time of year, I fantasize about living in the desert without a tree for a hundred miles. But then I get over it….m.

www.hawktalk.org
http://monteenmccord.blogspot.com

Wally update...

Ghostly visitors...

Wally update...the day after.

The right way...and the wrong way.

Good morning y’all,

This link came up on my YouTube page this morning from CLAWS, Inc. I apologise ahead of time, but blogspot doesn't allow for hyperlinks, so if you wish to view the clip, you will have to copy and paste. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOP8wxCikDc&feature=related

I don’t know where they are located, but it’s a 4 minute clip of 3 Barred Owl orphans and their subsequent release. The big difference between HawkTalk and CLAWS (along with 99% of the other rehabbers) is the operant conditioning and subsequent HACKING of young.

The Barred owl babes from this season

When released, they aren’t thrown out to live or die…they leave chambers at their leisure and settle into the trees around the property

The term ‘hacking’ means to condition the babes to come to a certain spot for food while still in chambers (using a portable hack board), then moving the hack board outside the door to the chambers when the time comes to release them. They are wed to this hack board because they have been taught that it’s their food source. Rather than being taken to a strange place to be tossed out, the idea is that they will remain close by, developing their life skills while being fed on the hack board. This is a ‘slow release’, as opposed to what the CLAWS clip shows as a ‘hard release’. A slow release takes months of dedication and consistency because the babes are having to learn everything on their own while you make sure they don’t starve to death in the process.

The hack board – the life line to their survival

They venture farther and farther out and will continue to wean themselves from your help but every now and then, one will return to say ‘hello…remember me?”

I don’t know if there is any scientific data available, but it just makes sense to me that the orphans that are properly hacked have a much better chance of long term survival than ones that are grown to a certain age, then just tossed out to live or die. When you take into account that about 80% of the whole healthy babes that are parent raised starve to death before their first winter is up, can you just imagine the staggering mortality rate for birds that are raised to a certain age, then, as in this case – taken to the middle of a football field so they have to fly HOW FAR (?) to find cover, THEN hope there is enough prey to sustain three young, hungry tots that have zero life skills?

Please don’t email them and give them grief; I just wanted to illustrate that there is a right way and a wrong way to raise orphaned raptors to achieve maximum success and why anyone would wish to waste such time and resources to a less than successful end…I just don’t understand.

If I made the rules (and believe you me, we have plenty of them at the state and federal level) I would REQUIRE young to be hacked out and if you don’t have the proper habitat/skills, then you would be required to pass that baby along to someone who possessed those skills.

The clip below is of little Wally, who, by the feel of his keel and his disposition, is an adult Barred owl who was gliding along minding his own beeswax when he slammed into the side of a chicken truck Wednesday night. He broke his right leg and his right wing and underwent a huge surgery yesterday. A big HawkTalk hug and thanks goes out to Dr. David Martinez and the staff of Loving Hands Animal Hospital for patching him back together. This is the link to a video of a collection of stills that I took yesterday… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0CmQz0pZu8

He’s up today, with his bad leg propped up on a towel roll, leaning against the side of the crate. It’s going to be a long haul for this poor guy; I just hope his good leg can hold up for the three weeks it will take before we can pull the pin on the bad one because I cannot force him to lie down. *sigh*

As always, thanks for taking the journey with me and remember that if at any time, you wish to get off the train, just tell me and I will remove you from the mailing list….m.

PS: I know life sucks for everyone right now, but if you have a little Mouse Money to spare, it sure could go to good use. 

www.hawktalk.org (for the donation link and lots of cool video clips on the right side bar)

Sugery for little Wally...to the tune of SEVENTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

Little Wally at hospital

Update on Wally, the Barred owl...

The sucky part of my job. :(