Whenever possible we liaise and work with other wildlife centres in the UK in order to deliver the best care possible for wildlife casualties. Working together with other centres is important, ensuring that casualties have the best possible chance of rehabilitation and eventual release back into the wild. Different centres have different methods and skill sets which should be pooled to ensure the best treatment possible for all animals.
One centre that we have worked with several times is East Sussex WRAS who do fantastic work in the south of England and we were recently asked by them if we could help with a tawny owl chick that had sustained a fractured tibia. We are lucky enough to have the support of 2 vets with orthopaedic skills so of course we agreed to take the owl. Stress is one of the most common causes of death in wildlife casualties so the more we can limit this the more chance there is of a successful outcome.
Unfortunately there is no Air Ambulance for wildlife casualties (perhaps that should be the next fundraiser, lol) but WRAS have the support of the fantastic Graham Mountford who has his own light aircraft and he offered to fly the owlet up to Staverton Airport which isn’t far from Vale, saving a huge amount of time and stress for the patient. So on Wednesday 16th May the tawny owl was flown the 100 miles at 3,000ft from Shoreham to Staverton where he was met by one of our team and transported back to Vale. On arrival he seemed totally unphased by his journey, unaware of the lengths people have gone to to help him out.
We are very hopeful that this first flight will not be his last and his next one will not be in a plane but will be using his own wing power 🙂
Thank you to Graham & WRAS.
Finland has shown a sharp increase overall in tawny owls in the recent three decades was from 422 to 1710 active territories found, from 198 to 1566 nests found and from 168 to 1341 successful nests found. When vole populations were high, the number of young tawny owls introduced into the population of Finland was ten times higher than in low years. It was found in Denmark that a control group of 32 out of 131 radio-tagged young that were supplementally fed by researchers were more vulnerable to predation (36% of these died, mostly due to mammals like foxes around fledging age) but also earlier nests were vulnerable as well (more so to other birds of prey).
Very interesting data, thank you.