What's with All the Ruckus?

I went outside to go feed the adult Red-tailed hawk last Saturday and heard quite the commotion amongst the trees, with crows and seagulls all very disturbed by something and loudly vocalizing their distress. I continued walking down the path and an eagle flew off of our compost pile to a nearby tree!

Now, in all the years I have been at Wolf Hollow, I have never seen an eagle eating out of our compost pile. I have seen crows, ravens, song birds of all shapes and sizes, and even a fox picking through it like a buffet, but never an eagle. So, me being me, I went over to see what it could have possibly found worth eating and saw this:

It's the remnants of the deer leg that we fed our eagle in residence the other day. Looks like it did a good job of stripping it, even removing the fur. Yum!

I continued on to drop off food for the Red-tailed hawk and he is doing so much better. Now out in the Slatted Flight cage, he is flying and eating well and can catch live mice, which is always the last stumbling block they need to overcome/master before their final bid for freedom.

It wouldn't surprise me if it was released sometime this past week. The younger Red-tailed hawk was released a few weeks ago as well.

The eagle is still with us, still slowly healing, and still pissy. They took another x-ray of him to see how the dislocated joint was doing.

The big bulge at the base of his neck is his crop full of venison, so let's move our focus a bit south of that to his "shoulder" area. If you notice the joint on the right, which is actually the left wing, the ball of the main wing bone, the humerus, is in the socket of the shoulder, or coracoid/scapula area. Now take a look at the other side. You can see that the humerus is displaced out of that socket area. Here's a closer view:

Left shoulder....looks good! Right shoulder....

...not so much. I didn't see the initial x-ray, but hear this is an improvement over what it looked like upon his arrival. So that's good I guess. But if he would just keep a wing wrap on, it would help to speed things up! But since he won't, it's a steady but slooow healing process. I sometimes wonder if it actually will heal completely. I was told early on in my stint as a WH volunteer that soft tissue damage in birds is extremely hard to heal, more so than breaks, as if the tissue stretches too much it won't restrict back enough for the bird to be able to use that muscle/tendon to the extent it needs to, which is a bummer if it's a wing injury, as that means it won't be able to fly again. So let's keep our fingers crossed.

His feet look good though!

Til next time...