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Diana Miller examines a kestrel as a visitor looks into the Raptor Center's ICU. |
I put about 250 miles on the wildlife taxi (volunteer wildlife transporters) yesterday and today.
First was a call to pick up a fawn — M. and I were the third leg of the relay that brought it three hundred miles from Durango. These are all volunteer wildlife transporters — no Colorado Parks and Wildlife official vehicles.
The Fawn
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Fawn getting a bottle. |
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The backstory as it was given to me: Some rafters (on the Animas River?) found a fawn struggling in the mud by the water. When they tried to help it, they discovered that it had a broken leg.
The leg was wrapped in an elastic bandage, but the fawn herself (as we later learned) was alert. In fact, she made soft "mewp" noises during much of the remaining forty miles. Someone had given her some
colostrum supplement and milk replacement — and sent the remainder along with her. But she was less than a week old, still showing her dried umbilical cord, and she was
hungry.
At the rehabilitation center (a private home) she got more milk and water and was left to to rest in a quiet, carpeted shed.
We got the news this afternoon that she had gone to the vet — and it was not a broken leg at all, but a knee dislocation. The bone was re-set, and the leg was placed in a temporary cast to keep it in place. So her prospects are pretty good.
The Hawk
This morning's call came from the
Raptor Center — could we go to a different southern Colorado town and pick up a
red-tailed hawk that had "fallen from the nest."
OK, we could. (Insert long drive.)
The hawk was at a warehouse / operations center belonging to
San Isabel Electric Association. But it was no red-tail, it was an
American kestrel. That is sort of like confusing a pickup truck with a
Smart Car.
The SIEA manager had it in a cardboard box, which was good. Its nest mate was flying in the same roofed-over, open-sided storage area, landing on coils of wire and old transformers leaking
PCBs into pans of kitty litter. A sign on the wall said that that was the storage area for PCB-problem equipment.
The sibling seemed stronger, although not yet fully confident about this whole flying business. Nearby on a wire one of the parents (I assume) was giving the kestrel
"killy killy killy" call.
So kidnapping one offspring was enough, it seemed to us. I told the manager not to worry about the other bird, that it would probably be all right.
Back at the Raptor Center, director Diana Milller lifted the kestrel from the box in front of a group of kids who were on an educational visit. "American kestrel!" shouted one. Give that girl a prize.
Diana said the bird had grease or oil on one wing and set about washing it. Other than that, it looked all right, and I hope that with a little food, rest, and some time in a flight cage, it will be ready to be released.
There's More
As I was typing this, the telephone rang. It was the local rehabber. "Our" fawn already has a roommate, as two more came in today. And another might have to be shuttled down from
Lakewood. Could we be available tomorrow?
UPDATE, JUNE 20: We picked up the fawn. The relay system worked, so we had to go only twenty miles for it. It was healthy—apparently seized from some ignorant person who had found an "abandoned" baby.