Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!pacbell!pbhyg!ead
From: ead@PacBell.COM (Elizabeth A. Dykstra)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Great Horned Owl
Message-ID: <1812@pbhyg.PacBell.COM>
Date: 17 Oct 89 01:08:08 GMT
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 52

I had an experience last weekend that I would like to share with the net.
Three of us had just finished hang gliding on the dunes north of Santa
Cruz, and had gone to watch the sunset at Hole in the Wall beach, a small
cove with a broad sandy area protected by cliffs.  We found on the beach
a quite recently deceased Great Horned Owl.  The owl (we nicknamed him
"Hooter") was lying in a flying attitude, wings half spread.  His wing span
was approximately 4 feet, his feathering was absolutely perfect, and there
did not appear to be any wounds on him that would cause death.

This creature was so beautiful, with his eyes wide open, we were very 
concerned as to the cause of death.  Particularly because one of us is a
Santa Cruz resident, and the rest of us literally share the same airspace
with such birds; we wanted to know if the cause of death was pesticide
related, or connected to any other type of ecological condition.

We carefully bagged the bird, and stopped at the Ano Nuevo park and spoke to
a ranger there about the bird.  He wanted us to leave it with him, so that
it could be stuffed and placed in the soon-to-be-built Ano Nuevo museum.  He
was not very concerned with the cause of death, but this WAS a beautiful
specimen.

We ended up refrigerating (not freezing) the bird overnight, and taking him
the next day to San Rafael, to a wild animal rescue operation.  We did not
have to have a necropsy or a toxicity report; the staff there immediately
identified the cause of death.  Evidently, this was an immature bird who had
suffered a broken leg about one month before his death.  He could no longer
catch sufficient prey, and his keel and backbones were very prominent.  He
weighed about five pounds, and had died of starvation.

The happy ending to the story is that another Great Horned Owl residing at the
reserve with severe feather damage will be receiving feather grafts from Hooter
to replace wing feathers.  This is not as generous as we at the time thought;
the reserve is interested in not sustaining the cost of an entire year of care
for the live owl, until he can undergo a normal moult.  With the feather graft,
the live owl can be released sooner back to the wild.  We wonder whether the
graft will work, or if it will leave this live owl very vulnerable, and
possibly shorten its lifespan?

Does anyone know anything about such operations, and their rate of success?
While we feel that we "did the right thing", I'm not so sure that this is not
experimental, and more for the benefit of knowing about how grafting can work,
and save boarding expenses, rather than to save the life of the owl.  (The
owl's life is not threatened by the feather damage as long as it is in
captivity.  A premature release, on the other hand, is quite dangerous.)

Please comment.

By the way, we were told that death by starvation is not at all unusual for
these birds.  How very sad.


Elizabeth Dykstra