Injured Barred Owl

We had an amazing visitor to our house last night. Driving home from a party Kieran and Daddy spotted a large bird lying on the edge of the road. When we turned around and came back we realized it was a large owl, and it was alive (though barely)! It was lying face down on the edge of the road and had clearly been hit by a car. As it was going to fall below 20 degrees last night, we rescued the owl and took it home to our warm, darkened basement.

Within an hour the owl was standing up, and by morning she was moving around freely. This is a barred owl, and is truly a magnificent creature! She is very large, standing about eighteen inches tall, and has the darkest brown eyes we have ever seen, we were ally mesmerized. She didn't like us too close to the front of the plastic dog kennel where we had her housed, but other than that, she seemed to quickly accept our presence.

We tracked down the Virginia Raptor Conservancy and arranged to drop her off today. Kent is a licensed Raptor rehabilitator and allowed us to stay and watch while he did a full inspection of the owl, even asking Ken to hold her for a while (see picture, it is a special grip that controls their feet and tail feathers, so you can't get bit). He did not find any broken bones and the wings appeared functional. In fact, she was quite frisky (a good sign). I don't know about you, but throw me against the windshield of a car moving at 35 miles an hour and you would cause plenty of damage. He did say that she would have died from exposure last night, but now that she has recovered some, he will try and release her back into the wild if her eyesight tests okay (that is on of the biggest concerns with owls, as their large eyes are very vulnerable). All in all, it made for an exciting Saturday, with Kieran pretending to be an owl and imagining with Daddy that our Subaru was an Owl ambulance as we sped to the owl hospital. :)

Here she is in our dog kennel in the basement, look at those eyes!



Here we are at the home of a licensed raptor rehabilitator in Falls Church, VA. He has just removed the owl from our vehicle.



While the inspection of the owls skeleton was not terribly pleasant for the owl, it did not show any fractures.



Here is Ken tickled to death after being asked to hold her while she is hydrated (he placed a tube down her throat to give her water).