A Baby Season Like No Other
Baby season—the peak reproductive months for local raptors, falling roughly between February and August—is always one of the busiest times at the California Raptor Center. Staff and volunteers expect to be bustling about the facility, working long hours in the heat of the summer to care for the inevitable influx of baby raptors. It is an annual, anticipated challenge, but 2020 presented a whole new set of hardships on top of the norm: with a global pandemic that led to lockdowns and closures in early spring, the CRC faced baby season with only a skeleton crew of essential staff.
Under lockdown, the CRC’s hardworking corps of 40-50 volunteers could not be on campus, leaving the center entirely reliant upon its two core staff and four student staff. Despite the adversity presented by the COVID-19 crisis, the CRC remained committed to its mission and admitted every chick and injured adult brought to the center. And in line with 2020’s reputation as a year of curveballs, several of this summer’s patients were quite unusual. Here is a recap of some of the notable cases:
- Down the River with an Osprey
- Full House: Construction Dislodges a Family of Barn Owls
- Weathering the Storm: A Young Golden Eagle's Second Chance to Fly
Down the River with an Osprey
In early May, an adult Osprey arrived at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital after being found entangled in fishing gear near Knights Landing. Fortunately the entangled Osprey had no major injuries: aside from minor soft tissue trauma to the wings, the Osprey had minimal medical needs and was prescribed a few days of rest and recuperation in a flight cage at the CRC. CRC staff aimed to return the Osprey to its home area as soon as possible to minimize time in captivity and help reunite it with any mate or chicks it may have.
One of the CRC’s community volunteers happens to live in the general area of Knights Landing, near where the Osprey was originally rescued. This made for an ideal release arrangement, and a plan was quickly hatched: after the Osprey’s injuries resolved within a few days, it was ferried back to Knight’s Landing and released alongside the Sacramento River. With a few long, broad strokes of its wings, the Osprey immediately took to the air and remained soaring above the river for several minutes before drifting out of sight. (Watch the release here!)
Though not a baby season chick, this patient warrants special mention due to its rarity at the California Raptor Center. Osprey are fish-hunting raptors with a worldwide distribution, frequently encountered along bodies of water. Despite the species’ cosmopolitan distribution, the CRC rarely receives Osprey patients, and Osprey have a reputation as a challenging species to care for in captivity, in large part because of their specific hunting style and feeding habit of plucking live fish out of the water after a steep dive. The CRC is thrilled to have been able to successfully care for and release this unique raptor!
Full House: Construction Dislodges a Family of Barn Owls
A quartet of baby Barn Owls was in luck when their nest site was disturbed by construction this summer: their human neighbors happened to be two School of Veterinary Medicine faculty. When equine specialists Dr. Monica Aleman and Dr. John Madigan noticed that their neighbor’s barn was undergoing major construction, they inquired and discovered the commotion had disrupted a nest of resident Barn Owls, which were in a cavity near the barn’s ceiling. Drs. Aleman and Madigan swooped in to save the babies, and in an elaborate rescue operation, they safely secured all four siblings before the construction could further imperil the birds. Dr. Aleman then brought the owlets to the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, where the avian specialists at the Companion Exotic Animal Medicine and Surgery Service observed that the four chicks were dehydrated but otherwise unharmed. With their clean bills of health, the chicks were sent to the California Raptor Center, where staff oversaw their care for the few weeks of growth they had left before fledging.
After a little more development and flight practice, the Barn Owl quartet (plus one honorary, unrelated "sibling" that was added to the group later) were fully independent and ready to go home. CRC staff joined Dr. Aleman and Dr. Madigan near their residence outside of Woodland for the release. As Dr. Aleman released the birds into the night, she got to watch the owlets she rescued swoop into a nearby orchard to begin their adult lives in the wild.
Weathering the Storm: A Young Golden Eagle's Second Chance to Fly
The California Raptor Center received another rare patient at the start of June. After stormy weather rolled through the area, a pair of dedicated eagle watchers, Modesto Berber and Shawna Serpas-Berber, returned to visit a Golden Eagle nest they had been monitoring for years near their home in Rumsey. The nest, high in a pine tree on the precariously steep slope of a canyon, had been home to two growing eaglets for the past few months. The chicks were near fledging, and that day, the Berbers trained their scopes on the hillside to check on the eaglets’ progress.
They were shocked to see that the pine tree lay splintered on the ground, presumably brought down by the earlier inclement weather. The adult eagles were nowhere in sight. But one eaglet, the smaller of the two siblings, was visible. And alive. It sat drooped over the trunk of the tree, unmoving, injured, and weak. Without rescue, it was sure to succumb to its injuries and starvation.
Clockwise from left: the injured eaglet sits on the broken nest tree; the hilly terrain around the nest site; and the eaglet after being safely rescued. First and last images courtesy of Shawna Serpas-Berber and Modesto Berber. Second image courtesy of Google Earth.
Though reaching the injured eaglet would be difficult, Shawna and Modesto devised a rescue plan that would involve crossing the creek in a raft and scaling the steep hillside to reach the fallen tree, hauling a large transport tote with them the entire way. Despite thick brush and boulders and a scramble up the treacherous hillside, they made it to the toppled nest. The scanned the area for the parents and larger sibling, and finding no sign of the other eagles, they carefully restrained the injured eaglet in a towel and placed him in the tote for the long trek back to safety.
When the young Golden Eagle, dubbed “Miracle”, was brought to the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, his rescuers’ suspicions proved correct: veterinarians diagnosed a fracture in the eaglet’s left wing. In addition to his injury, he was emaciated and dehydrated. For the eaglet’s first few days in the hospital, he was very subdued, but with extensive support and expert care, he began to perk up. After a little more than a week later, he was discharged to continue healing at the California Raptor Center.
In his nearly two months recuperating at the CRC, “Miracle” graduated from a small hospital cage to a larger holding pen and finally into a flight cage that would allow him to exercise his muscles and wings. His down-covered legs feathered out, giving him the sleek “booted” look of his species (Golden Eagles belong to a group of eagles aptly dubbed the “booted eagles” for their feather-covered lower legs). He remained small in stature, suggestive that he is indeed a he; male Golden Eagles tend to be smaller than their female counterparts.
Looking much more like a grown bird, fully fed and with fully healed wing, “Miracle” was ready for a true flight test. CRC staff took him to a nearby field to fly in the open on a creance, also called a flight line, which would allow a more thorough assessment of his flight capabilities over long distances. His first flight was a bit of a flop—the eaglet seemed disinclined to fly—but on two follow-up attempts, he took to the air and flew smoothly over the open ground, a welcome sight for everyone involved in rescuing and caring for him.
At this point, members of many other species would be ready to return to the wild. But young Golden Eagles require months before they are able to survive independently of their parents; the parents continue to provide food for weeks after the young have left the nest. To help overcome the parental deficit of fledging while in human care, young rehabilitated Golden Eagles are often sent to train with falconers, honing their hunting skills before final release. To give “Miracle” this critical hunting experience, CRC staff transferred him to another center at the end of the summer. There he will be paired with a falconer and trained to hunt, and if all goes well with his training, he will return to the wild a healthy and capable adult eagle.
The CRC wishes this special Golden Eagle the best in the next phase of his rehabilitation. Bon voyage, “Miracle”!