THE OWL FOUNDATION NEWS 4117 21st Street, R.R. 1, Vineland Station, Ontario L0R 2E0 905-562-5986
Charitable Registration Number 12431-5094-RR0001 www.theowlfoundation.ca November 2019
2019 has been a year of more hard news than usual at the Owl Foundation, with the death of founder Kay McKeever in April at age 94, deaths of 7 resident owls including our best known birds, Big Bird (see insert with May newsletter) and Big Red (page 2 of this newsletter), and loss of our donated food supply (page 4). Thankfully not all the news is bad. We had two pairs of resident Great Grey Owls hatch eggs. Scotty and Petra had one hatch, while Fred and Fanny hatched two. All the youngsters will be released next spring. Scotty and Petra's will be released in northern Ontario, Fred and Fanny's in Manitoba. Great Grey Owl pair Sonata and Baroque tried again, laying eggs, which sadly were infertile. Maybe these two will finally become parents next spring? Our Snowy pair, SassyQ and Yeti hatched four young; three females and one male. Sadly one owlet died in late September. A necropsy revealed it died of West Nile virus (WNV), yet the family was in a screened enclosure. We were concerned for the other residents in the unit, all of whom are susceptible to WNV. It appears to have been an isolated case, we had no other fatalities. Our foster owl parents were kept busy this spring tending to owl orphans. Eastern Screech Owls Earl and Pearl fostered five, Screech Owl Windy fostered four and Barred Owl Jenny fostered two (see story page 3). Our Great Horned dad, Wawa, fostered three, and Big Red fostered eight total- three older ones transferred to Wawa and five still with her at the time of her unexpected death. Our Long-eared Owl, Astro, fostered a juvenile Long-eared Owl. We rarely receive young Long-eared Owls. Our donor tours were once again a big success. This year we offered memorial T-shirts for both Big Bird and Big Red. The Big Bird shirts quickly sold out. We do have them back in stock if anyone is interested in purchasing one. The cost for a T-shirt is $20, but you will now have to pay for the postage, cost would be based on where you live. Please contact us if you'd like a shipping estimate. Several of our tour guests were gift recipients and were amazed at our facility (we are pretty amazing!!). An owl sponsorship makes a great Christmas gift *hint*hint*, with the recipient getting an invitation to our 2020 sponsor tour. If you'd like to give an owl sponsorship, please return enclosed sponsorship form ASAP to allow time for processing, mailing, etc. The gift can be sent to you, for you to present, or can be mailed directly to your lucky recipient, your choice. Once again, we'd like to send a big thank you to all our volunteers. Our on-site volunteer hours and opportunities have grown (see story page 4). While you don't get to work with the owls, you do have the opportunity, on occasion, to see them up close. Our volunteer driver network continues to work wonderfully and we thank all of you who have driven this year to transport the owls (over 220 different trips at press time, some involving multiple drivers). PNPC Animal Rescue/Canadian Wings of Rescue volunteer pilots continue to support us too, flying owls when driving distance too far. I'd like to thank all our end of year donors for your timely donations last December. Revenue Canada has clamped down on back-dated cheques. If you'd like to have a donation receipt for 2019, please have your donation arrive by December 31st to avoid any questions by Revenue Canada. Thank you to all our supporters for giving a hoot, we couldn't do it without you. Happy Holidays! Cathy Foxcroft One of the Snowy Owls hatched at The Owl Foundation Business Administrator and released in Manitoba photo: Taylor Brown The Owl Foundation Churchill Northern Studies Centre Page 2 Tribute to the One and Only Big Red If you were able to attend our fall donor tours, you learned that our amazing Great Horned Owl foster Mom, Big Red, had passed away. She arrived as an adult in July of 2000 from Mountsberg Raptor Centre, bringing her age to a minimum of 22, and perhaps even older. Her injury, a fractured humerus, had not healed in alignment, and left her with a drooping wing and limited flight. Big Red’s body was sent to the lab to determine the cause of death. It appears she was dealing with a chronic condition that had affected the soft tissue in her mouth and the bones in her skull, eventually leading to a bacterial infection and septicemia. Prior to her death she showed no real change in her behaviour, ever so diligently watchful of her foster owls as they were learning to fly and explore the habitat around them. Even though Big Red was housed here for 19 years, she never lost her “wildness”. Wild animals do not show weakness when ill or injured unless they are in shock or very debilitated. To show weakness is to show vulnerability to attack or predation. It makes it challenging to assess whether a resident owl should be examined more frequently than their regular health checks. Big Red was watching over five fledglings at the time of her passing. Those five owlets were brought inside to check for any disease concerns, spent a week in treatment, and then were placed under foster Dad Wawa’s care. During her time at The Owl Foundation Big Red was a mother to 94 orphaned owlets!! Each spring the story was the same, she would go to her nest, lay a few eggs and wait. She never seemed to care that Big Red July 2000—June 2019 when "her" baby arrived she may have only been sitting on her eggs for a few days (average incubation time for this species is 32 days) or that she had been sitting for over 40 days….they would always “hatch”. She never seemed to be alarmed that her baby was much larger than it should be or that when the second egg "hatched" it was anywhere from a few days to a month later (typically Great Horned Owl chicks hatch at 24 to 36 hour intervals). An average clutch size is three to four, but Big Red would easily care for five or six orphans at once, being careful to divide her time between those that had started to explore outside the nest to those who still needed her warmth and extra attention when it came to feeding. Younger owlets need a mother’s body to keep warm and require her to tear up food into bite-size pieces while the ones that have started to explore can swallow a whole mouse or tear up larger prey items on their own. Big Red always knew what her young charges needed. During Big Red's time here, there were only two occasions when the arrival of an orphan came ahead of her egg laying. This would confuse her. “Who is in my nest?" "How could that thing be mine?" "I didn’t lay an egg!” She took a bit of convincing but both times she just couldn’t resist being a mother to an orphan in need. It was rewarding to hear Big Red clack her beak in warning as we walked by, and to hear her fledglings mimic her response to humans in the area. It reassured us that once released, these owls would stay away from humans and remain independent and wild. She will be greatly missed. We hope to encourage Agnes, a resident female Great Horned Owl, to step into Big Red's role as foster mom to future Great Horned Owl orphans. Big Red was an extraordinary owl and will always have a special place in our hearts. One of 94 of Big Red's foster babies Page 3 Barred Owlet We rarely receive a newly hatched owlet. We wanted to share photos of a Barred Owl we admitted this past spring. His story was in our spring newsletter and he has since been released. Owls grow up very fast, reaching the size of an adult around eight weeks of age. Between eight and ten weeks they will quickly finish developing their adult plumage, losing their baby fuzziness. (the plumage on their head is the last change.) Most owl parental care is complete by 12-16 weeks but some families will still give support in the form of food sharing and protection for another 1-2 months. Some owl species gain independence from their parents much more quickly. They are all certainly very cute when young!
Newly hatched Barred Owl chick, note the
Three weeks old and starting to The owl (in the back) is now about look like a Barred Owl. At four weeks seven weeks old. His wing feathers he will start growing adult tail are nearly done growing and his tail feathers and begin exploring outside has almost reached full length. At this of the nest box. stage he can fly short distances. His foster sibling in the foreground is about four weeks old. Looking like an adult now the owl is in release training; learning to hunt and gain stamina in a larger habitat. He is now 12 weeks old. When he was 5 months old, he was returned to the Lakefield area where he was originally found. The same volunteer drivers that initially helped with transportation were able to return him to the wild. (See Volunteers Beth and Darcy-page7) Page 4 Food Supply and Volunteers Big changes occurred this year in the food supply our birds depend on. For many years Charles River Laboratories generously supplied us with mice and rats. We paid only the cost of the special shipping crates they used. They were donating at least 1100 live mice and 100 live rats to us each week, and often there were extra mice. In January the shipping crates more than doubled in price, but the cost to us per rodent was still low compared to buying rodents. Then in June, Charles River informed us that they would no longer be able to supply us with rodents at all, after July, as they were reducing their rodent operation. This presented us with the major challenge of completely replacing our rodent supply, the main kind of food we use (we also use some quail, from a local supplier). As part of solving this problem, we wanted to diversify our rodent supply, so that we would not be One half of the mouse house new breeding colony so dependent again on a single source. We decided to look for at least two new rodent suppliers, in case one stops. We also decided to establish our own mouse and rat breeding colonies to supplement the rodents we purchase. Having our own colonies will help provide the live supply we need for release training, reducing our dependency on being able to purchase live rodents, and giving us a further margin of safety in case we suddenly have a supplier problem. We don’t propose to become self-sufficient in rodents as that would require a very large operation, using a lot more space, equipment and people than we have, and it would give us the risk again of depending on a single source. We tried test orders with three rodent suppliers, two of which were satisfactory for us. One supplies only frozen rodents, and the other both live and frozen. We are ordering regularly from both now. Having to buy rodents has of course greatly increased our food costs compared to the donated supply we had. We started our mouse and rat colonies in July, using the last of our Charles River supply. Staff at Charles River kindly provided advice on running a colony, with information on each stage of the rodent reproductive cycle. We made changes in the mouse house, doubling the shelf space for holding rodent bins. We purchased many more bins, water bottles and food trays. Volunteers built many custom lids needed for rodent bins. We set up standing orders for rodent chow, and wood shavings used for rodent bedding, as we are now using a lot more of these supplies. Maintaining the rodent colonies takes some hours of work every day. For this we are dependent on volunteers. We would like to have one or two volunteers each day for rodent care, seven days a week. The duties include replenishing water and food, changing the wood shavings in the rodent bins, and related cleaning work. Volunteers follow a plan of the specific duties to be done each day, posted weekly in the mouse house. Most volunteers work once a week and do 2 to 3 hours of work that day, at a time that is convenient for the volunteer, but that does have to be planned. We are using an internet-based volunteer scheduling tool that allows volunteers to choose the days and times when they will volunteer for rodent care. If you are interested in volunteering Volunteers Petra and Myra changing mouse bedding for rodent care, please contact us. Page 5 Train Wreck? We love a happy ending…. And we could really use one after the year we have had. This past July we had a telephone call from a man who works for CP rail. He had found an owl beside the railway tracks. Oh boy, this can’t be good. We were able to quickly find a volunteer driver to assist with transportation and bring the owl to Vineland. When the owl arrived and we opened the box, we were greeted with a fledgling Great Horned Owl sitting inside. Poor thing, what an introduction into the world of flying! During his exam we first noted that the leg was badly swollen and there was no movement of the joint and toes below the break. Was there damage to the tendons and ligaments? Did the fractured bone ends cause some damage to the muscles when the bird tried to stand? The leg was quickly immobilized and the bird further examined to ensure there were no other wounds. Thankfully it was just the leg that was injured and the bone ends were still inside his body, making a repair a Leg fracture, easily visible on x-ray greater possibility. Compound fractures (where the bone protrudes outside the body) are much more challenging to repair as quite often the bone has died from exposure. Radiographs were taken at our local vet clinic, West Niagara Animal Hospital. The images were sent to The Links Road Animal and Bird Clinic in Toronto for further consultation and to plan our next course of action. Due to how much the fractured bone ends had moved away from one another, surgery was needed. It was not a simple surgery, nor was there any certainty that a repair would work. An internal pin was placed inside the hollow bone and external pins were affixed to help keep the bones aligned and to prevent rotation. This type of orthopedic surgery can be very costly and we are so grateful to everyone at The Links Road Animal and Bird Clinic for their expert, donated, time. Dr. Mavromatis and Dr. Michele Yee performed the surgical repair. We were pleased that within a few days the toes were starting to move on their own and the owl was able to stand. There was hope! The owl was given a large convalescent space so he could still work his wings - we didn't want him to lose flight muscles. We were hopeful his young age would allow for a faster recovery time. These types of injuries can sometimes take up to four months to recover from, with the pins staying in place for 20-30 days. Stamina is a big part of our criteria for release. Owls need to be able to fly fast, with agility, to capture prey. They don't have the option of finishing their strength recovery in the wild. Many failed attempts would make them weaker. Our aim was to return the owl to the wild by the fall to enable him to have enough time to find and claim his own territory before winter. We are happy to say by mid-October he was fitness ready and released with a The external pins are supported by a bar, fully functional leg... and a nice strong toe grip! shown covered in green vet wrap Page 6 New Residents We have welcomed two new residents to The Owl Foundation; Spirit, a Northern Saw-whet owl and Ulysses, a Snowy Owl. These owls are two polar opposites when it comes to size; Northern Saw-whet Owls being only 18-21 cm tail with a wingspan of about 42-48cm and Snowy Owls standing at 52-71cm and having a wingspan of 126-145cm. The selection process for our permanent residents involves careful consideration. What is the nature of the disability they have to live with? Is there any chance of chronic pain associated with the permanent changes? Will the injury lead to future problems with health or mobility? Can the owl adjust to being in confinement in proximity to people? Do we have a companion available? Do we have appropriate housing for that species? If we feel the owl is a suitable candidate, we apply to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. They have the final say.
Spirit Spirit arrived in February of 2018 from Newmarket, suffering from head trauma and soft tissue damage to the left shoulder. The retina of the right eye had suffered some damage as well but we suspect vision was only affected to a small degree. The owl underwent rehabilitation and was slowly given more and more flight space to gradually build up muscle and flight stamina. Unfortunately the left wing never regained full function and now has a permanent droop. This owl species is migratory and needs to be able to fly long distances at a time. During rehabilitation the owl adjusted well to its limitations and showed little stress once in an outdoor habitat. We hope Spirit can take on the role of fostering young juvenile Saw-whets in the future.
Ulysses Ulysses arrived in April of 2018, a transfer from another facility in Sarnia. They had removed a badly damaged eye to reduce risk of infection and surgical repair had been done to his right humerus (upper wing bone) because of a fracture. The owl was transferred to The Owl Foundation for flight training. Rebuilding flight stamina and live prey testing for birds of prey that have suffered a fracture takes time. During the healing process they are not permitted to fly for several weeks and the return to flight must be done carefully. We want to avoid injury to the soft tissues like the tendons and ligaments. These important components of movement can tighten up when not in use. Anyone who has ever injured themselves and had to undergo physiotherapy can attest to the pain and time it takes to return to full function and how easily a setback can occur if overused (too much too soon). We saw some noticeable improvement as he moved to larger and larger spaces but the flight was still showing asymmetry. We were not confident that with his one eye and the extra work he had to put into turning would lead to a successful life in the wild. We are hoping that he will become a companion for our female Snowy Owl, Astrilla. Page 7 Moulting Feathers are very important structures for birds. Feathers keep them warm, protect their skin from damage, provide amazing colours for display or camouflage and for most species, give them the ability to fly. It is important they are kept in good condition and that birds have a cycle of feather replacement called a moult. The moult pattern is unique for each species and is regulated by their bodies. An unhealthy body will not initiate feather growth. It takes a lot of energy to grow new feathers. Our favourite moult pattern is that of the Eastern Screech Owl. A healthy Screech Owl will often moult the majority of their head feathers in the summer months giving them the appearance of odd little gremlins. Below is a picture of a fully feathered screech owl. Alongside are photos of two scraggly looking owls we had the pleasure of releasing recently (once they finished their moult). Typically they replace their flight feathers around the same time. The owls were undergoing health checks when we took their photos. And you worry about a bad hair day!
Volunteer Voice Our Volunteer Experience...by Beth and Darcy Earl Hi! We’re Beth and Darcy Earl. I’m a stay-at-home Mom/homemaker and Darcy is a (recently) retired Firefighter from Brantford, Ont. A few years ago we were on a road trip in the Huntsville area and heard a rescuer on the radio looking for a driver to take a bird to Vineland and decided to give them a hand since it was almost on our way home. We got to deliver a box that turned out to be a Red Tail Hawk. Since then we’ve been volunteer drivers for the Foundation. Usually we do the longer distant drives, picking up or releasing birds as far away as New Liskeard. Both of us enjoy road trips so it’s great being able to help some Owls along our journeys. Darcy does most of the driving and I spend my time navigating and crocheting to pass the time. I have made lots of owl hats that are sold to raise funds at the annual donor tours. (note from TOF: they are a very popular item) Now that Darcy is retired we are looking forward to lots more journeys...we just may need a bigger car! Page 8 If Only They Could Tell Us What Happened.... This Great Horned owl was found in a river bed soaking wet about an hour north of Toronto. With the help of two volunteer drivers, he was quickly transferred to The Owl Foundation. Upon admission, a physical exam found no broken bones but he did have a very badly bruised elbow and was dealing with some internal parasites. With a bit of time and TLC we are happy to report he was released back to his home territory after about six weeks of care.
Great Horned Owl, note blue skin at the elbow - bruising Great Horned Owl in intensive care unit
THE OWL FOUNDATION 4117 21st Street, R.R. 1 Vineland Station, Ontario L0R 2E0
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