From Cape Wildlife Center

This barn owl chick has been in our care for several weeks now. He was found after he had fallen out of his nest in a barn in Falmouth.

This is a very exciting finding because barn owls are a species of special concern here in Massachusetts and only have established populations on Nantucket and Martha’s vineyard. This is only the second nest site we’re heard of on Cape Cod!

Our rescue team was called out to the scene to see if the chick could be renested with his family, but unfortunately we discovered that this little owl sustained a broken leg that had already started to heal very crooked.

This type of surgical repair has a more guarded prognosis than a fresh fracture because in order to align the bones you must break down lots of fibrous tissue that has formed and this could potentially cause further damage to the leg. However, given the special nature of this case our veterinary team decided to perform the surgery.

Since then it’s been a slow progress, with him having almost no feeling in the leg past the fracture site, to him slowly trying to stand on it. He’s still got a long road to recovery but we’ll be here to support him every step of the way!