Sunday 17 July 2011
Life and death.
Rather a pretentious title, but it seems appropriate.
I'm afraid the buzzard didn't recover, his injuries were just too severe. In spite of the glucose, anti-biotics and TLC, as well as the help and advice of my vet, he died. It's sad, but I did the best I could.
In the wild, something like 40% of all birds of prey die within their first year. This can be from injury, disease or starvation and the factors can be cumulative. For instance a young bird loses a few feathers making a bad landing in a tree. This means that it can't quite catch a prey item, which means that it gets a bit weak from lack of food. It picks up an internal parasite from somewhere ( maybe eating carrion), and gets weaker. Because it can't fly fast enough to catch food for itself, it starves or is taken by another predator. A predator has a very precarious existence, in the wild.
By contrast, a non-predator sometimes seems to have it made. Someone once pointed out to me that " If you're a herbivore, living somewhere like Exmoor, the ground is a never-ending platter of food, laid out in front of you". True enough, I suppose, but not when the ground is three feet deep in snow like it has been for the last couple of winters.
At the moment, there's no snow, just rain. I knew Devon was meant to be a bit damp when we moved here three years ago, but I didn't realise just how damn damp. My car has developed a green mould on the black rubber surround of the windscreen. It's no consolation to know that the summers have been " unseasonably wet" for the past three years, when you're developing webbed feet.
A week ago today, I picked up our latest recruit. This is a female sparrowhawk ( in falconry terms,a "spar" , as opposed to a male sparrowhawk, which is a "musket"). She was born on 16th June, and is developing at an astonishing rate. When I got her, she wasn't able to stand. She learned to do that over just three days and is now happily trotting around. Over the past two days, she's learned to stand on one leg, as hawks do when they are relaxed. She's also learned to scratch her head with one foot, without falling over.
But the biggest change has been in her appearance. A week ago, she was a ball of white fluff, with a few brown feathers sticking out of one end. Now, her breast feathers have come through while her back and wing feathers seems to grow as you look at them.
This fast development is part of Nature's way of giving the birds as good a start as possible. While they're in the nest, unable to fly, they're extremely vulnerable. She seems to know this at some level and spends most of her waking time plucking at the white down to get rid of it and encourage proper feather growth.
I took her outside today for the first time, to meet some customers on a hawk-walk. The rain held off long enough for us to see some nice flying from Lady Macbeth and Cassius. Additionally, the customers were able to admire the sparrowhawk as she sat in mobile nest on the passenger seat of my car. One of the customers, Claire, is conservation officer for the British Dragonfly Association. What a great job! She's also a keen photographer so hopefully, I'll be posting some of her pictures either on www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk , or on here. In the meantime, I attach a few I've taken recently.
Next Saturday, we'll all be at the mid-Devon show, together with my friend Tom and his son Daniel ( also known as the youngest falconer in the UK). With Daniel in his pram, and the sparrowhawk in her nest, it'll look more like a creche than a falconry stall!
I'm afraid the buzzard didn't recover, his injuries were just too severe. In spite of the glucose, anti-biotics and TLC, as well as the help and advice of my vet, he died. It's sad, but I did the best I could.
In the wild, something like 40% of all birds of prey die within their first year. This can be from injury, disease or starvation and the factors can be cumulative. For instance a young bird loses a few feathers making a bad landing in a tree. This means that it can't quite catch a prey item, which means that it gets a bit weak from lack of food. It picks up an internal parasite from somewhere ( maybe eating carrion), and gets weaker. Because it can't fly fast enough to catch food for itself, it starves or is taken by another predator. A predator has a very precarious existence, in the wild.
By contrast, a non-predator sometimes seems to have it made. Someone once pointed out to me that " If you're a herbivore, living somewhere like Exmoor, the ground is a never-ending platter of food, laid out in front of you". True enough, I suppose, but not when the ground is three feet deep in snow like it has been for the last couple of winters.
At the moment, there's no snow, just rain. I knew Devon was meant to be a bit damp when we moved here three years ago, but I didn't realise just how damn damp. My car has developed a green mould on the black rubber surround of the windscreen. It's no consolation to know that the summers have been " unseasonably wet" for the past three years, when you're developing webbed feet.
A week ago today, I picked up our latest recruit. This is a female sparrowhawk ( in falconry terms,a "spar" , as opposed to a male sparrowhawk, which is a "musket"). She was born on 16th June, and is developing at an astonishing rate. When I got her, she wasn't able to stand. She learned to do that over just three days and is now happily trotting around. Over the past two days, she's learned to stand on one leg, as hawks do when they are relaxed. She's also learned to scratch her head with one foot, without falling over.
But the biggest change has been in her appearance. A week ago, she was a ball of white fluff, with a few brown feathers sticking out of one end. Now, her breast feathers have come through while her back and wing feathers seems to grow as you look at them.
This fast development is part of Nature's way of giving the birds as good a start as possible. While they're in the nest, unable to fly, they're extremely vulnerable. She seems to know this at some level and spends most of her waking time plucking at the white down to get rid of it and encourage proper feather growth.
I took her outside today for the first time, to meet some customers on a hawk-walk. The rain held off long enough for us to see some nice flying from Lady Macbeth and Cassius. Additionally, the customers were able to admire the sparrowhawk as she sat in mobile nest on the passenger seat of my car. One of the customers, Claire, is conservation officer for the British Dragonfly Association. What a great job! She's also a keen photographer so hopefully, I'll be posting some of her pictures either on www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk , or on here. In the meantime, I attach a few I've taken recently.
Next Saturday, we'll all be at the mid-Devon show, together with my friend Tom and his son Daniel ( also known as the youngest falconer in the UK). With Daniel in his pram, and the sparrowhawk in her nest, it'll look more like a creche than a falconry stall!
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Injured buzzard.
We have a new arrival at North Devon Hawk Walks. (www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk) A friend found an injured buzzard by the roadside and brought him to us on Saturday. He's obviously had a hard life so far. His left eye is destroyed and he was very weak and wobbly. His feathers are very dishevelled ( always a sign of a bird that is in trouble) and his flight muscles seem undeveloped. His one good eye was not big and round as one would expect in a healthy bird, but more slit-like. That's anothe obvious sign of a bird that is ill or very weak.
He is obviously quite young as he still has the speckled plumage of a juvenile. That is, one that has not yet been through the moult and grown his adult plumage. I would guess that he's been injured somehow, and because his eyesight is so impaired, he's had difficulty getting enough to eat.
My friend said that the bird had actually been hit by a motorcycle, but there's no evidence of external injury. His wings and legs appear to be working OK, but he was very, very weak and barely able to stand.
After checking him over, I left him alone in one of the carrying boxes I use for my hawks. This is a large, light-proof box. An injured or sick bird should always be kept warm, dry and undisturbed. The darker the better, so that the bird feels safe and doesn't get stressed or scared which would only add to it's problems.
So, after consultation with my vet, I began feeding him a glucose solution via a crop-tube. This is just a syringe of liquid attached to a thin, flexible tube which is passed down the throat and into the bird's crop. This is not difficult to do, but it needs great care as it is possible to get liquid into the bird's lungs which is obviously extremely dangerous.
I took him to the vet yesterday ( Monday) who checked him over and gave me some antibiotics to administer in the same way. The eye injury would almost certainly mean that he has got some sort of infection. His mutes ( that is, his droppings) had quite a lot of green in them, which is a sign of intestinal infection.
He is now much stronger and taking an interest in his surroundings. He is still refusing to eat solid, or even mashed, food, so we are keeping up the crop-tubing. He seems very tame, but this is actually a bad sign. A wild bird should be afraid of humans and if it allows itself to be picked up or handled without protest, it means that the bird is ill and/or weak.
I hope that after the course of antibiotics, he will be able to tackle solid food. Once he can do that, we'll have to decide whether he is fit enough to be released back into the wild. Buzzards are very common around here, and I suppose, realistically, that one more or less would be no great loss. But if you keep birds of prey, there is something very poignant and touching about comparing your fit, healthy, well-fed birds with something as battered and sorry-looking as an injured wild bird. There is a great desire to bring the wild creature up to the best condition you can. We'll certainly do the best we can.
I'll post some pictures soon.
Other news from North Devon Hawk Walks.
Last week, I had a couple of people on one of our Bird of Prey Ownership Courses. ( details on www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk) This was Greg and his son Laurence. They'd been thinking about getting a bird of prey for some time and had done a lot of research and preparation. They met me in Barnstaple, where the Devon Wildlife group had invited me to take part in their annual show, and after meeting Lady Macbeth and Cassius decided to invest in a course.
They did very well during the five days of the course and got a load of hands-on experience which will make them more confident and better able to deal with the practicalities of handling, feeding and training a bird of prey. When there is only a couple of people to deal with, you can cover a lot of ground, and they were able to pack a lot of learning into the five days. Apart from the handling and manning, they tackled imping, coping,casting, using the creance and recovering the bird from a kill.
The only downside was that they were both considerably better than me at pool and thrashed me in our local pub where we went to celebrate the end of the week. I hadn't played for twenty years, and I was rubbish then too.
Time to feed the buzzard again.
He is obviously quite young as he still has the speckled plumage of a juvenile. That is, one that has not yet been through the moult and grown his adult plumage. I would guess that he's been injured somehow, and because his eyesight is so impaired, he's had difficulty getting enough to eat.
My friend said that the bird had actually been hit by a motorcycle, but there's no evidence of external injury. His wings and legs appear to be working OK, but he was very, very weak and barely able to stand.
After checking him over, I left him alone in one of the carrying boxes I use for my hawks. This is a large, light-proof box. An injured or sick bird should always be kept warm, dry and undisturbed. The darker the better, so that the bird feels safe and doesn't get stressed or scared which would only add to it's problems.
So, after consultation with my vet, I began feeding him a glucose solution via a crop-tube. This is just a syringe of liquid attached to a thin, flexible tube which is passed down the throat and into the bird's crop. This is not difficult to do, but it needs great care as it is possible to get liquid into the bird's lungs which is obviously extremely dangerous.
I took him to the vet yesterday ( Monday) who checked him over and gave me some antibiotics to administer in the same way. The eye injury would almost certainly mean that he has got some sort of infection. His mutes ( that is, his droppings) had quite a lot of green in them, which is a sign of intestinal infection.
He is now much stronger and taking an interest in his surroundings. He is still refusing to eat solid, or even mashed, food, so we are keeping up the crop-tubing. He seems very tame, but this is actually a bad sign. A wild bird should be afraid of humans and if it allows itself to be picked up or handled without protest, it means that the bird is ill and/or weak.
I hope that after the course of antibiotics, he will be able to tackle solid food. Once he can do that, we'll have to decide whether he is fit enough to be released back into the wild. Buzzards are very common around here, and I suppose, realistically, that one more or less would be no great loss. But if you keep birds of prey, there is something very poignant and touching about comparing your fit, healthy, well-fed birds with something as battered and sorry-looking as an injured wild bird. There is a great desire to bring the wild creature up to the best condition you can. We'll certainly do the best we can.
I'll post some pictures soon.
Other news from North Devon Hawk Walks.
Last week, I had a couple of people on one of our Bird of Prey Ownership Courses. ( details on www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk) This was Greg and his son Laurence. They'd been thinking about getting a bird of prey for some time and had done a lot of research and preparation. They met me in Barnstaple, where the Devon Wildlife group had invited me to take part in their annual show, and after meeting Lady Macbeth and Cassius decided to invest in a course.
They did very well during the five days of the course and got a load of hands-on experience which will make them more confident and better able to deal with the practicalities of handling, feeding and training a bird of prey. When there is only a couple of people to deal with, you can cover a lot of ground, and they were able to pack a lot of learning into the five days. Apart from the handling and manning, they tackled imping, coping,casting, using the creance and recovering the bird from a kill.
The only downside was that they were both considerably better than me at pool and thrashed me in our local pub where we went to celebrate the end of the week. I hadn't played for twenty years, and I was rubbish then too.
Time to feed the buzzard again.
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