From the most excellent Michael Ellis at A.W.A.RE…

The owl is, as of today going into a small intermediate flight cage to test its ability to fly and rebuild its flight muscles.

At this point the wings are being held up in a balanced position and we have hopes that the bird will progress over the next week to a point that it will be releasable back to its home habitat.

…AWARE and CNC work together on many bird rescues. We often do the rescue and emergency triage and then we transferred this bird to CNC for its continued care. Kathryn [at the Chattahoochee Nature Center] specializes in raptors and is one of the best in our field so this bird has a good chance.

Michael also mentions that he sees no reason why we couldn’t make the bird’s release back into it’s habitat a publicized event.  I’ll coordinate with the Chattahoochee Nature Center to see if we can make that happen.

Stay tuned.

I followed up with Michael Ellis at A.W.A.R.E (Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort) and he was good enough to give me this update on “Hooty”, the barred owl found injured at the intersection of Church and Norris Street early this week.

The owl has some pretty extensive blunt force trauma to the shoulder but we could not find any visible breaks. We gave it some initial care and then yesterday we transferred it to the Chattahoochee Nature Center for long term supportive care.

Michael says that it’ll be a week or so before he knows anything further about the owl, but he promises to keep us informed if I just drop him a note…which I will.

After the jump, Michael provides a primer on what to do if you encounter an injured wild animal in the future. Read the rest of this entry »