Bittersweet news on two injured raptors

On Tuesday, I shared the story of a male turkey vulture with a broken wing whose retrieval I took part in. I talked to Laura from Indiana Raptor Center yesterday, and I'm sorry to say that he had to be euthanized. Unfortunately, the amount of dead tissue in the bone was too great. However, he will have a worthy second life, as he is to be mounted and presented to a local nature center for use in their interpretive programs. He lives in my memory, too. After years of watching these birds as they soared on thermals or congregated around a carcass, I was able to see one up close, to touch it, to watch as it greedily accepted a meal of raw beef. I hope I'm not too sentimental in supposing that I saw some avian form of joy in him as he ripped off pieces of meat, flinging it back and forth and spraying us with the gatorade it had been dipped in. Birdspeed, momentary friend!


Patti cradling the turkey vulture as she places him in a box for a nap.

But I save a bit of news that, while not entirely happy, has a little more sweet than bitter, I think. On Monday, I also got to see a Bald Eagle in the center's flight barn. I had previously been in the barn with Great Horned Owls. This was a totally different experience. Eagles are a LOT louder than owls, and this bird watched me more intently than the owls did. When the center received the eagle, he was in terrible shape, emaciated, with an enlarged heart and liver. Patti and Laura's skills have brought him back to flight-readiness, and though he doesn't have many days ahead of him because of the condition of his liver, he will get to live them in the sunlight, on the shore of whatever nearby lake he chooses. You can't ask for much more than that.


A soon-to-be-released bald eagle in the flight barn.

To have an eagle fly less than four feet away from me and feel the wind off of his wings was a thrill.

Indiana Raptor Center update

I've written here before about my occasional work with the Indiana Raptor Center, helping spread the word about conservation and rehabbing injured birds of prey so we can keep this proud branch of the dinosaur family going strong. There's been a bit of activity lately, so I figured I'd round it all up in this post.

Vulture Rescue Squad!

There's a vulture in there, honest!


This week, I visited the center to talk shop and hammer out some details about a couple of design projects, detailed below. As soon as I pulled in the driveway, they had a surprise for me: my first rescue trip. A nearby landowner had reported a turkey vulture with a broken wing. Center founders Patti Reynolds and Laura Edmonds weren't sure if it was a good ID; wild turkeys are sometimes confused for vultures. But we had to go check it out.

We bounced up and down the hills and dales of Brown County, and after several minutes were at the location. We found that the ID was good: it was a small Turkey Vulture, with an obvious wing injury. Volunteer and master taxidermist Marcus donned some heavy gloves, Patti grabbed a towel, and I took a large net, with my camera hanging from my neck. Forming one point of an enclosing triangle, it was my job to keep the vulture out of the road. Patti and Marcus approached from their points, and within five minutes of us pulling up, Marcus lunged, pinned the bird, and scooped him up. Patti wrapped him in her towel.



Luckily for the bird, he had managed to scrounge some nutrition. Luckily for us, it hadn't been too recently. The vulture tried to defensively vomit, but since he had an empty tank, we kept clean. After a chat with the homeowner about the bird's possibilities for rehab, we delivered him to the Raptor Center's facilities where Laura was ready to do an evaluation.





He had a pretty bad break right at his wrist joint (seeing vulture pus is marked off my bucket list), which Laura cleaned and wrapped. After hydrating him and feeding him raw beef dipped in gatorade, she gave gave him a shot of painkiller and returned him to his box for a much-needed nap. Next, he'll visit their veterinarian who will determine the chances for recovery, and his ultimate fate will be decided. If the wing can be healed, he'll eventually be released. If not, he'll have to be euthanized. Fingers crossed for a good prognosis.



UPDATE: Sadly, the bone was too far gone and the bird had to be euthanized. He is going to be mounted for a local nature center's educational programs. But I'll always remember him like so: a creature joyful to be fed fresh meat, whipping it back and forth in his beak and spraying us with gatorade. To a second life as a teacher of curious minds.

Conserving a Jurassic Legacy
I'm always excited to work in a new production medium, and when Laura recently asked me to think about a design for a patch depicting a Mesozoic dinosaur with an extant bird of prey, I was stoked to work on it. I recently submitted this design of Velociraptor and a Red-tailed Hawk, which everyone at the Raptor Center gave the thumbs up to... next step is production. I'll be talking to a manufacturer to find out if I need to tweak anything to make sure the small detail is preserved once it jumps from screen to thread. I cannot wait to get the embroidered final product. I'll snap some photos for sure.



Red-Tailed Hawk Conservation
We've had a rash of protected bird shootings in Indiana over the last several months. Luckily for our birds, Patti and Laura know that a method to combat this has been tried and proven in other states: simply, put birds in front of school children and get the population of outdoorsmen to pay attention. I'll be helping with both efforts, but first up I'll be doing a poster aimed at the latter group. I'm really excited that we've received permission to use one of William Zimmerman's Red-Tailed Hawk paintings! My task: to drive home the point that while a hawk will occasionally nab a chicken or two, your friendly neighborhood raptors save you thousands of dollars in the long run by eating up the rodents that covet your grain stores. I'll share this here as well.

Birds are dinosaurs, blah blah blah...

Extant Theropod Appreciation #1: The Turkey Vulture

I've been meaning to feature birds more often here - as they are the living descendants of theropod dinosaurs - and I've decided to start a new series called Extant Theropod Appreciation. First up: one of my favorites, Cathartes aura. The Turkey Vulture.

Vultures get a bad rap. If I mention that I've paused in my travels to watch a couple of them eat a possum that lost a fight with the Michelin man, I get an odd look. If I express my favorable attitude to one taking up residence in my yard, I receive a shifty glance. They're gnarly, ugly, cowardly eaters of stinky carcasses, after all. Think of how they're portrayed in the media. In westerns, they're harbingers of doom, hanging back and waiting for the hero to slough off the burden of life so they can pick the flesh from his bones. In Looney Tunes cartoons, they're just dopey (and erroneously saddled with the name buzzard).


Photo by Mike Baird, via Flickr.

For me, there are few nobler winged beasts. They provide a vital service, ridding the environment of dead flesh, limiting the spread of disease. And for that task, they are finely honed: heads free of feathers that would get funky when shoved into the guts of bloated carrion; a keen sense of smell; a soaring flight that conserves energy while looking for a meal; and strongly acidic urine used to cool the legs and kill bacteria on them. Sure, you can list any animal's adaptations and hold them up as evidence of its virtue. But in the case of the Turkey Vulture, they also demonstrate that it's not merely "settling" for a diminished profession in comparison to the eagles and hawks we celebrate so often. Vultures are perfectly specialized for their role.

I'm so glad I'm not alone in this.