Loonies

Last week at Bird TLC was pretty dang exciting for me, I got to anaesthetise a bald eagle(Haliaeetus leucocephalus) that has a reoccuring lesion on its right wing. He's getting abit peeved with the daily torture so we decided to be kind and put him under the good stuff. He took a while to wake up so I had the job of keeping him restrained while he came to..



Another neat arrival; A juvenile Pacific loon (pic above)! The ladies have named me the Seabird Expert for some crazy reason so I was responsible for this guy. He was found on a road in Anchorage, he most likely landed on the road by accident and seeming these guys are so well adapted for the water they can barely walk on land. He had some sores on his feet but they healed quickly after some good bathes and lotions. The Vet and I had to tube feed him as loons rarely eat in captivity. I took him down to my old rig at the Alaska Sealife Center in seward as they are slightly better equiped to care for waterbirds..he has hopefully been released back to the wild by now.



In the afternoon, Jennifer, another volunteer, and I got to release a short-Eared Owl near the Palmer hayflats North of Anchorage. It was pretty neat to see this bird come into the facility under our care and then be finally released. The facilty has about a 50% success rate with the birds so its great to see one go back to the wild, hopefully a bit fatter and wiser.

Of he goes!

This week we had a full house with the following additions; 4 bald eagles, a merlin, boreal and great horned owl! So in total we currently have 2 merlins, 6 owls, 8 eagles, 2 juncos, 2 stellers Jays, 1 robin, 2 ospreys, 1 peregrine, 2 ravens, 1 spruce grouse, 1 red tailed hawk, a lapland longspur and a partridge in a pear tree.

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