Louise Helps a Kestrel in Iraq - I had the opportunity to assist with a rescue MANY miles away, when I was contacted by a US medic stationed in Iraq as part of support services.  A young female Eurasian kestrel had been found in a lake, having fledged from a palace ledge right above the water before she was capable of flying all the way across.  She was being repeatedly dragged under water by very large carp - over 3' in length! 

 The owl was the subject of this years' Open House Name that Bird contest, and our suggestion box was stuffed with some 150 possible names - ranging from Fluffy to Archimedes. Three suggestions, however, were for 'Lorax' - the subject of Dr Seuss' environmental awareness book - and we chose that. Lorax "speaks for the trees, as the trees have no tongues" and a very good job she does, too! She's starred in several television news pieces and has become much in demand with visitors. She's grown from soft-ball sized, when she fell from a nest and broke her right wing in multiple places, as well as damaged her elbow and phalanges, to full grown, weight-wise, but still wearing much of her baby down. Because it was obvious from her first x-rays that she would not be releasable, she has been very well socialized to people, handled from the start, which will pay off in a much lowered stress level over the rest of her life.

A Gryfalcon makes it to Eugene from the Arctic - The gyrfalcon, whom we named Nike (the goddess of victory), has overcome a lot! Gyrfalcons are the largest falcons, hunt primarily birds in high speed tail chases - either sea birds along the coasts or ptarmigans, if nesting at higher elevations. Trapped on a beach in Washington State in February by a researcher banding peregrines, she was found with a badly infected eye, which had to be removed. She's healing fine, eating fine, and tolerating a life around people that is the polar opposite of her first 8 months of life in the high, unpopulated Arctic. These birds breed circumpolarly and the immature females sometimes find their way down into the northern United States during the winter. A few winters ago, one ended up in Lubbock TX, to the joy of bird-watchers in the southern US who had never had the opportunity to see one. It would roost on a water tower and take its pick of the waterfowl wintering in the area.

The great gray owl (what could we name him but Gandalf?!) was found in Enterprise in NE Oregon with partially healed fractures of the radius and ulna, one of which was so close to the wrist joint that he now has imperfect extension of the wing. Injured as an adult, he's taking a bit longer to settle in but has so far made a good display bird - we're hoping to provide him with the training and enrichment of being glove-trained, but it's a slow and patient process to earn the trust of an adult.

Rehabilitation - We've received into care a record number of birds so far this year - 78 through the first week of June (and 97 by the end of the month!) - substantially ahead of every year since 1997! In fact, in each of the last 12 years, the numbers by the end of the first week in June were fairly indicative of the total numbers for the year.  And in 1997, the only other year that was close (77) at this point, ended up with over 200 birds in total! Since 1994, our first year at our current facility, the average number of intakes by this point of the year was 59; totals for each of those years has averaged 163.

As usual, the difference is primarily made up of babies - and, of those, normally it's barn owl babies whose population is so cyclical. Babies need SO MUCH FOOD! Up to twice as much as the parents eat, during this tremendously high growth period of their lives. The 15 barn owl babies we've had in care for the better part of the last six weeks eat about 75-100 chicks or mice a day ... at a cost of $15-40 each day!  They've all just graduated to the flight cage, from being housed with our two foster parents, our resident education birds - and as soon as they are all fully flighted, live prey training begins!  We'll have to provide 75-90 live mice a day, as they learn the ropes. Anyone interested in helping to support those costs of over $30 a day would be an angel.

Barn Owl Parents - Our resident male and female barn owls, Artemus and Diana, take exceptional care of the orphans we place in their care... and that often means we need to go in wearing hard hats! Or we need to catch Diana first and put her in a box while we weigh the babies. Unlike mammals, baby birds need to gain weight every day, or something is wrong. So we have to weigh them every day to make sure they are getting their share of the pile of food we provide and the adults feed them, at least until they are close to fledging age, when they reach their full adult weight.  At that point, in fact, they often demonstrate 'light before flight' and lose a little bit of weight as they start to fly.

Saw-whet Owls - Our saw-whet owls, Isis and Isolde, are hosting two orphaned saw-whet owlets; our barred owls, Loki and Usiku, have one. They are all doing a great job! Using our adults as surrogate or foster parents ensures that the babies grow up knowing they are owls, imprinting correctly on their own species. We also now have nine near-fledging kestrels (one of which we raised from 4 days of age), but they are doing fine feeding themselves, are past imprinting age, and have each other for correct socialization, so we haven't put them out with our adults.

Raptor Eggs - We've also had an exceptional year for eggs from our education birds, and one from a rehabilitation bird that was hit by a car, and laid an egg within a couple of hours of coming in! She was released, we incubated the egg and then gave it to our female education screech owl to incubate along with one of hers - but it did not hatch. None of our birds' eggs are fertile, but it does give the birds a slice of a natural life despite captivity. Our bald eagles, spotted owls, screech owls, red-tailed hawks, and northern harrier have all laid eggs. The red-tails (both females) for the first time incubated a full period and have started over again!  We removed the one remaining egg from their first nest after 6 weeks (two just plain broke!), then a couple of weeks later started in again. We feel that laying eggs is a sign of good nutrition, as well as of a certain level of 'comfort' with their situation.

Re-nesting Barn Owls - We have also re-nested a number of barn owls this season - returning them to their parents' care once injuries healed or a safer nest site was created - including moving three nests into barn owl boxes built for the occasion. One at the Lane County Fairgrounds was up in some old, precarious fiberglass insulation over a horse arena; we successfully moved one hatchling and 4 eggs, and the mama! Those babies fledged successfully - though we got one of them in again, found out in the daytime and being beaten down by crows not far from the fairgrounds. Replacing another nest, high in the ripping insulation of a barn, was an acrobatic maneuver to install - and we had a novice bird-handler but expert rock-climber do the honors! The third nest was straight down and in between hales bales about to be sold ... the farmer built a wonderful nest box and a safe runway for the branching owls high in the peak of the barn roof. A favored nest tree on one property had lost its top in a storm, and the pair chose a smaller cavity, forcing babies out too early and with sores on the backs of their legs and feet from the tight quarters.

Red-tailed Hawks - Though thoughts of Spring usually involve baby birds, we do continue to receive injured adults - for some reason, mostly owls and most of those, hit by cars. Two non-owls giving our hearts a lift recently were red-tailed hawks: specifically the release of two adults. One bird had been sent to us from Free Flight, a rehabilitation facility in Bandon OR. She had come to them with a fractured femur, and they wanted to be sure she was fully healed and capable of hunting, so sent her to use our 100' flight cage. They normally do the pre-release conditioning of birds in their care on a long line, called a creance - but concern for the fracture site had them preferring not to have anything attached to her legs. Here, she could exercise fully and also demonstrate a continued ability to hunt live mice without restraints on her leg. She came to us in February.

West Nile Virus Recovery - The other bird, a male, was our so far one and only West Nile Virus bird. He was found out in the Camp Creek area on October 18, 2004; spent his first few days mostly sleeping, with other signs of neurological impairment; tested postive for WNV, and had many classic symptoms: sudden bouts of apparent 'delirium' where, when stimulated, he would briefly but madly attack the walls of the incubator with one foot; difficulty swallowing; vacant stare; tremors; head tilt; reluctance to stand; equilibrium problems; temporary vision problems. His progress has been a bit rocky, with him taking one step backwards for each two steps forward ... mostly around eating. We'd move him to a bigger enclosure and he wouldn't eat; would move him back to a hospital cage, and he'd eat; would try him again with a companion as a rival/model, and he wouldn't eat, etc. Once he was stable, his vision problems had resolved (his depth perception and thus his aim for the food was poor for weeks) and he was past being tube- or hand-fed, he'd at first only eat cut-up food on a plate next to him on a perch, then cut-up food on a plate on the floor of his hospital cage, then whole food, on the floor of his hospital cage ... we'd move his whole hospital cage to a flight cage to let him get accustomed to new surroundings ... etc. Finally, he seems to have bonded with this female and is maintaining weight on live prey! So, after seven months, he's free again. We banded him and released them together from the Center on May 28th.

WN encephalitis creates an inflammation in the brain and can cause this whole range of symptoms, sometimes with permanent damage or damage that is very slow to heal. We are delighted that he seems to have recovered completely now - and should have a life-time immunity to WNV. The bird was treated with supportive care (fluids, tube feedings with extra vitamins B and E, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and an experimental treatment of using a human angio-tensin receptor blocker - which further research indicates probably wasn't able to penetrate the brain effectively enough to help, but didn't hurt.)

WNV is a mosquito-borne bird disease which was first found in North America in 1999 and has spread across the country in the succeeding five years, reaching Oregon late last summer. It occasionally affects, and can be very dangerous to, humans and horses, and some other mammals, though they are dead-end hosts - i.e., the virus cannot replicate in those hosts enough to be passed on to another mosquito and thus to another host. Everyone is urged to take preventive measures by reducing mosquito-breeding habitat - anywhere water can collect, become stagnant, and mosquitoes can lay their eggs - such as planter basins, old tires, bird baths.

Successful 11th Annual Earth Day Open House - Despite unusually wet spring weather (for which we are actually grateful, after a very dry winter raised concerns about both fire danger and our well) which brought intermittent but heavy rain on the day of the Open House, we had a great turnout of around 900 people. Everyone had a great time! We had Reading with Raptors Story-time, where a volunteer would read to the young children a book about one of our birds, with the bird perched nearby; face painting, wonderful music, refreshments, and drawings with all kinds of super prizes - all donated to help the birds. Hope you can plan on being here for next year's Earth Day Open House on Sunday, April 23, 2006.

Thank you! - We depend so much on the generosity and support of our friends. Thank you for your interest in the Raptor Center, and let us know if you have ideas or suggestions for this newsletter or anything else.