From World Bird Sanctuary
Mistakes were made. Barred Owl 23-742 suffered an unusual accident while hunting, getting both legs wedged into a tree crook. Thankfully, a passerby noticed the poor owl’s plight as she hung upside down in the tree and called our hospital for help. Our rescuers successfully removed the owl from the tree and brought her in for care.
While 23-742 escaped without any fractures, she has significant constriction wounds to both her legs. With how tightly her legs were wedged, circulation would have been cut off to the area and to her feet for an unknown amount of time. With injuries like this, it can take several days before the full extent of the damage can be determined, so it is too early to tell if she will survive her accident.
So far, 23-742 is using both of her feet reasonably well and is resting comfortably with medications for both pain and to help improve circulation to the area. Her wounds are bandaged, and she will receive daily cleaning and dressing changes to monitor the condition of the tissue.
Oh no!
So glad the kind human was there to call the right people! Hope she pulls through.
Me too! She looks very good though and is getting great care.
I’m always hesitant to show animals in distress or with injuries, even when they’re patched up, but I felt it was important to show how invisible they are, even when they’re in a bad spot.
I’m very glad someone decided to stop and get involved!
That looks to be a very uncomfortable way to be stuck and would’ve been a very sad way to go. Outside, everything is a potential danger.
I’m glad she was found, and I’m hopeful she’ll get a second chance!
Reminds me of all those magpies stuck in a metal fence
I forgot about the magpie eating fence! That was very satisfying to watch again. I wonder if there were repeat issues with it or if the local birds all learned to avoid it.
magpies are pretty intelligent, if the video wasn’t staged, they learned to avoid it. actually, part of why I’m skeptical of the video is that they’re very good at learning from other peoples mistakes. once the first got caught the others would have avoided it, too.
‘It’s suss’: Shocking theory behind viral TikTok of magpie rescue
On Reddit, things quickly got darker, with one person theorising that the birds may have been caught and placed there on purpose, pointing to a known online trend of people posting “fake animal rescue videos”.
In these fake posts, account holders place animals in dangerous situations so they can save the distressed animal and garner likes, however there is nothing to suggest that is how the birds became stuck.
Eww 😮
Experts also voiced concerns, with Sean Dooley from BirdLife Australia telling Yahoo News Australia that upon first watch the video looked “suspicious”.
He noted that the highly intelligent birds are part of the corvidae family which includes ravens and crows.
“They’re a very intelligent species,” he said.
"I’m a bit suss about whether this has been set up.
"They’re very good at learning and you wouldn’t imagine that once one was caught, others would be too.
“There’s been a lot of research on crows, and jays and magpies and how they have great memories and they have a very good concept of self and concept of the other and they learn from other birds which they observe.”
I love me some corvids. It seems we don’t have magpies where I’m at so I forget about them. They look very pretty though so I hope nobody messed with them. I’ll stick his head in a fence!
Wow that’s terrible I had no idea it was likely staged. Fuck all that shit.
Exactly. I don’t mind if people want to do weird things for attention, but animals aren’t props. Put your own head in a fence, not the birds.
I have a love hate relationship with Grackles. They pass through on migration. When they start flocking in fall, you know winter is about to set in. (the hate part of our relationship…) and when they pass through in spring, it’s fairly reliable that winter is not coming back (the love part).
They’re pretty cool birds, though a bit raucous. Mini-crows with shinny heads.
I do think the grackles are pretty. I love that iridescence and those beady little eyes! The starlings seem to follow them to my place, and once they show up, that’s the end of my fancy no shell bird seed. 😔 The red wing blackbirds show up then too and they’ve been pretty harmless too.
I decided to add some happy Barred Owl pics from Chuck Mell to keep things positive!
Hopefully she will make a full recovery and be able to be released back into the wild. There are some owls at my local nature center that are now permanent residents due to their injuries not healing properly to survive without human intervention. The center calls the owls (and other such animals) their “wildlife ambassadors” and show them in informational talks/ educational field trips.
I’ve seen year to year stats from a few of the rescues I follow and they are typically not great. You figure most of these animals that get brought in are on the small side and they either had a run in with a car, a building, or a bigger animal. A 30% survival rate seems to be the norm.
Most of them don’t seem to post ones unlikely to make it, but there are 2 on my feed that post failures. Being a veterinarian seems so tough. The fact she looks to be sitting up on her legs makes me hopeful. It’s so pitiful looking though, they always have that Charlie Brown frown.
The Barred Owl at the park down the street from my work is like 30 years old, one eye removed, severe cataracts in the other eye, and a partial wing amputation, but that guy’s been chilling there for like 20 years the one worker said. You have to be tough to survive outdoors, so never write them off!
Get well soon litte Ball of Fluff.
I saw in the comments of the post that she was eating the first time they offered her food, so that is a good start!
