A correction, update and thanks!

The correction is that the sandhill crane came from Homer, not Soldotna. He's liking the outdoors a lot more than the indoor mews.

From Soldotna we did get an immature great horned owl with a broken wing. Check out those eyes.

The thanks goes to PET ER from Petra. They gave me some donated road kill squirrels and she loved them.

Erin checks off on Ghost

Erin checked off on presenting Ghost the Snowy Owl on Sunday. I was her mentor for her training. She picked up on things pretty fast.

Ghost also saw that she was a good match.

Congratulations Erin!

Alaskan Bald Eagle released back into the wild

Borrowed from Youtube. Taken last Sunday by a member of the 477FG.

Sandhill Crane is in, Scaups are out

This Sandhill Crane came to us from Soldotna earlier this week. It was a very late hatchling and mom and pop and another older sibling headed south leaving this one behind.

I took this photo of these scaups right before I crated them up to release them. They were orphaned back in July.

All of the scaups were sticking together after I released them at West Chester Lagoon. They were really having a blast diving and swimming real fast. Now it's up to Mother Nature.

Autumn Wings Festival

Lilith the Bald Eagle is back in Valdez

Back in April, Lilith came to Bird TLC from Valdez. She and her mate were doing their mating ritual and they both crashed into the ground. Lilith survived, but unfortunately her mate did not. She was sent to Bird TLC and was in very rough shape, but no broken bones.

Check out this video.

After four months recovering at Bird TLC, she was healthy and fully recovered physically. She returned to Valdez earlier this week courtesy of ERA Alaska. She was returned back to the wild and our report from USF&W was that she flew beautifully.

Click here and here for more related stories about Lilith.

Call me Snappy

We don't often get the whole story of what happened to a bird that makes it come to Bird TLC. I love it when we hear from people who bring us up to date or as Paul Harvey would have said "and here's the rest of the story".

Hello,

Good to see an update of the Bethel Short-Eared Owl on your blog, “Of Grebes & Owls”. But sorry to see that the main website (www.birdtlc.net) and none of the links (maybe except your blog) hasn’t been updated since last summer.

My family brought in the owl to ADF&G. We were berry-picking between Bethel and Eek when a juvenile owl took off from next to us. Being young, it could only fly a short distance. One of our dogs gave chase, but before I could stop it, the dog was upon the young owl, grabbing its body and shook it. The dog left when I shouted at it to get away, but the owl was shaken up and hurt (broken leg and all) and at first I believed it wasn’t going to survive.

We took the owl back to camp and bound it tightly in a towel (like a body splint) and left it in our boat cabin. By the next morning, it had escaped its body splint and perched on the dash okay. We had a bunch of kids (7 kids, age 2-14, from 2 families) and they took a liking to it. When we first treated it, it snapped its bill and hissed. So the kids started calling it “Snappy.”

We brought it back to Bethel and then to ADF&G. When we arrived in Bethel, we fed it strips of meat. When ADF&G said they’d send it to Bird TLC, we checked your website every day for news of the owl.

I’d like to help out with its rehabilitation if I could. Thanks for responding.

Allen Joseph
Bethel, AK

How interesting of a story is that. Thanks Allen for telling us this story and taking care of Snappy until he got to Bird TLC.

I guess I'll get to updating the website now. (BLUSH)

Of grebes and owls

This young grebe spent just a short time with us. It was returned to the lake it was found at and released. It spent a couple days getting fed and regaining its waterproofing.

This short eared owl sent in from Bethel by ADF&G will be staying a while. It has a broken leg just above what would be its knee.