This Week at Liberty 03/08/2010

Current 2010 intake count: 189

The weather has been very wet of late, and although we'll miss this in June and July, the rain has been present nearly every weekend. But so far, we haven't seen too many problems in the wildlife community, just more of the usual problems. However, some of our human activities have been impacted...

At Logan's before the rain.

Joe and Libby wow the crowd - as always!

The drenched riders arrive at the River Bottom Saloon.

Door prizes help keep people smiling.

The Tres Rios Festival - "A river runs through it" (Photo by Bonnie?)

Two events this past weekend were impacted by the recent wet weather. On Sunday, the third annual Liberty Wildlife Born 2 B Wild motorcycle run was held, along with the Tres Rios Nature Festival. A few die-hard Liberty supporters rode their bikes in the driving rain and completed the run, while the festival was nearly rained out. Even so, Claudia, Bonnie, Carol and Mary were there to educate the public! OK, so Liberty also takes in injured water fowl...

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Joe and crew build some new enclosures.

Joe Miller and a crew of volunteers are building some new enclosures in order to house more birds this spring. We are truly bursting at the seams and any new space is welcome. That coupled with the increased size of some new birds and the prospect of getting more condors in the future require the increased housing.

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Dr.Orr draws blood from the osprey.

A lesser scaup arrives.

Tub-o-goose!

Jan checks the eye of a canada goose.

Toba looks for fishing line.

An injured leg is wrapped.

Along with all the water that we've seen falling from the sky (What IS that stuff...?), we're working on some more water birds... A canada goose arrived with an injured eye and possible internal injury from an auto collision, and another CG is in with evidence of fishing line-caused injury to his leg. Along with these, we also took in a lesser scaup who also is being observed and evaluated to determine what injury he has and what can be done. X-rays have been scheduled... And, the osprey is showing some signs of asper - not a good development. Tests have been ordered and Dr.Orr drew blood for the required tests.

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Another baby GBH is here.

Denise checks on a screech owl.

Two more arrivals this week qualify for the "Cutest of the week" award - a little screech owl brought to someone by their cat (!) , and another baby great blue heron orphan. Good thing we have a good source of fish from the state fish hatchery!

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AND, speaking of donated supplies, last week Dr. Orr mentioned to me that our copy of the Physicians' Desk Reference was a little out of date (The PDR is updated yearly and ours was dated 1992!) I mentioned this to Naomi who immediately contacted the publishers. Within 30 minutes, Mr. Gary Lew at PDR sent a new issue to Dr.Orr for Liberty's use. Thank you Gary, and all at PDR! You rock!

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A full crew for for vet night checks the eagle.

A snack for a big girl.

A beautiful bird (with X-Files eyes!)!

The bald eagle that has been in rehab for a couple of months now was checked last week by Dr.Orr, assisted by Dr. Wyman. The wing is actually beginning to heal! There is hope that the bird might actually fly again! She's not out of the woods yet and the pin in her wing will be removed this week (watch TW@L next week for the update), but it looks promising for the first time since she arrived.