General update

Here's this week's news from the birds!

The Humans have had to deal with multiple eagles at a time over the years, but usually there are multiple Golden Eagles, not Bald Eagles.  Bald Eagles are much more high-strung and fussy, and overall just more difficult than Golden's.  So now that there are four Bald Eagles in rehabilitation, everyone is talking about it.

There are two Bald Eagles transferred from another center who require the large, excellent caging system the Humans built here to finish their recuperation; there's a new guy who had the unfortunate luck of completing the circuit on some powerlines; and then there's the young knucklehead I've written about before who is blessed (cursed?) with a big eagle attitude.  With any luck we'll be kicking some of them out soon.

By the way, those Eagles eat a lot of food, and they're tearing through nearly a pound of fish a day each! If you have any leads on a safe, clean, healthy, sustainable fish source contact the Humans (www.rmrp.org), or if you'd like to simply donate money to help us buy safe, clean, healthy, sustainable fish, click the "donate" link to the right!

Let's see, other birds:  the immature Turkey Vulture the Humans admitted last year is about ready to head out.  He had to be over-wintered here because Turkey Vultures are migratory, and releasing him in the winter wasn't an option.  He originally came in unable to use his legs and with a high level of lead in his blood.  Last week he passed his final I'm-a-Turkey-Vulture-and-I-can-survive-in-the-wild test: he was given a whole prairie dog (they have very tough skin) and had to figure out how to get to all the meaty goodness inside.  It took a day or so (maybe he was letting it season?), but he found the soft spot in the armpit and managed to pull all the delicious insides of the prairie dog out through a hole he made there!  Big congratulations to him, I'll let you know when he's released!

A Great Horned Owl with a luxated (dislocated) wing impressed the Humans by flying upward to a high perch when he was moved to a large flight cage. Luxated wings can be tricky to heal, and the fact that he has good lift with his bad wing is great news for him!  Stayed tuned for news on that guy.

Other than that, the female Swainson's Hawk I mentioned in an earlier post is almost ready to lay eggs, and she's letting everyone know about it by screaming and talking all the time.  It's hard to concentrate here in the spring!  I'll see if I can sneak over to the nest she built and take a picture of it--she did a fine job with her stick arrangements this year.

That's all for now!