Today must be a day for me to rant. Before I state my little rant, let me share the story.
So I’m out in the backyard with the dogs and notice both of the dogs start surrounding this jumping thing. I yell at both of them “NO” and both dogs stop and look at me. I look at what they are all excited about and notice it’s a Purple Martin. Fortunately both dogs are used to our African Grey Parrot so they just wanted to sniff the bird.
I pick up the obviously injured Purple Martin, walk inside, and yell for Leecy to “come here, emergency”! I’m standing there with this bird in my hand and I hear no sign of Leecy. I yell again for Leecy. Still no answer. On the third time I yell for Leecy she yells back at me she was going potty (good thing I wasn’t injured otherwise I might have died while Leecy finished her business:-).
I ask her to put the dogs in their crates and tell her about the injured Purple Martin. I also ask her to grab her camera.
.jpg "Injured Purple Martin In Hand")
Injured Purple Martin In Hand
I then start to examine the bird and determine why it couldn’t fly. It had a somewhat obvious injury on its wing.
.jpg "Injured Wing Purple Martin")
Injured Wing Purple Martin
Here’s a different view of the injury.
Injured Wing Purple Martin Different View
I’m not a vet but this looked a little strange for a bird injury. From what I could tell its wing wasn’t broken but what do I know?
I ask Leecy to look up the number for a Wildlife Rehabilitator. She talks to the Wildlife Rehabilitator and the lady she talks to gives us a number for someone close by our house. Unfortunately, Leecy called that number and there was no answer. Once again, Leecy then called the Wildlife Rehabilitator that’s located on the other side of town. The lady said we were welcome to bring the bird in, but they close at 2 in the afternoon.
Good thing we have an African Grey as we have a travel carrier so that we can transport the injured bird in that.
Injured Purple Martin In Travel Carrier
I was quite surprised this bird was so calm. Then again, it might have been scared out of its mind. Either way, the bird seemed to know that being calm and not flapping all over the place was the best thing to do.
Leecy took the bird to the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Coalition (click on the name for their web page). The intake specialist at the Rehabilitation center said they were happy that someone bothered to bring in a songbird like a Purple Martin. She also said that the injury appeared to possibly be from a cat, but they couldn’t be sure until the vet examined the bird (so guess what my little rant is about?).
Another thing that I thought was nice about this place is that if you do bring in an injured animal you can send them an email and they will update you on the status of the animal. Leecy did ask if we could pick up the bird and release it back around our home (since it was most likely already nesting in our Martin house), but the intake person they probably wouldn’t be able to do that, although they would try and release it as close as possible to the address where the bird was found.
Oh yea, we did make a $100.00 donation to help with the costs of rehabilitation of the bird or however else they see fit.
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by texdr
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