Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Bad Bird Catcher II

Cindy and I picked up an eagle from Dutch Haror last night. Another flight donated by PenAir. This bird I won't discuss much. He's in bad shape. We filled him up with fluids, he was really dehydrated. A good shot of baytril and flushed his wounds with saline. If he's alive this morning I'll be surprised. His wounds were old, but he's a fighter. Not sure how they were caused.

While at the clinic I took a call from a woman about a raven that wouldn't fly. She said she and her husband were walking their dogs at Bartlett High School and there was a raven in the parking lot. We got a good amount of snow yesteday, so the raven was in the tire tracks in the parking lot were the snow wasn't too deep. Their dogs headed towards it but they stopped them. The bird only ran away, so they called us. While talking to them they said for as close as they were to it they noticed no injuries. It had jumped a snow burm after several tries and went into the woods. I told them I would be there in 30-45 minutes.

I went home and picked up my wife Ruth. She had been out of town for about a week and I figured we needed to spend some quality bird chasing time together. We went to the area the couple had told us where the bird was last seen. We found his tracks leading into and then all over the wooded area, but we found no raven. The snow was deep, but we trudged around checking under trees and any area where an injured bird would hide, but no luck. We left because we were getting cold and it was getting dark. I hope whatever made him a runner had stopped and he had flown off.

My luck at catching injured birds this year is not too good. It's a good thing for Bird TLC that I'm a volunteer and not paid by the hour. I've only brought 2 birds back so far this year, but they were so injured they were unable to hide, even if they wanted to. It's a good thing for me that I don't get paid by the birds that I bring in or I'd be a skinny raven chaser.

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