Spring and summer can be challenging times for young owls, hawks and eagles. They may tumble out of their nest before they can fly, or their nest might blow down in a heavy storm. Learning to fly isn't easy and some young raptors may injure themselves in collisions with trees or other structures. And sometimes well-meaning humans interfere, to the detriment of young birds.
Some young raptors can get back into their nest on their own power, but some are going to need help. The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota sets up a nursery each spring and summer to give such youngsters a second chance. Around 250 young raptors are admitted each year to the nursery, whose goal is to get as many young birds back to their parents as possible, as quickly as possible.
For the lucky few, their time at the nursery is short, if an exam shows no injuries or illness — these can be taken right back to their nest, where parent birds eagerly welcome them. Some require longer stays to give time for bones to heal, but some injuries or illnesses are so severe the patients can't recover and must be euthanized.
Consider a fuzzy young great horned owl patient whose nest had blown down in a recent storm, with three chicks inside. All three had broken bones, in two cases too severe for recovery. But one had a repairable broken leg, requiring surgery and a splint, then about a month in the nursery to heal.
The young owl's parents, having lost all their nestlings, had long since departed from the nest area, creating a new challenge: The Raptor Center needed to find another great horned owl nest with adults to serve as foster parents. Their youngsters needed to be a similar age so the foster owlet would fit in, and such a match-up was found in mid-April. There's simply no substitute for parent owls teaching life lessons a young owl needs, from mastering flight to learning to catch live prey in the dark.
"Raptors are great; they will accept fosters," says Dr. Dana Franzen-Klein, medical director and manager of the nursery. "After we put a new bird into a nest, we monitor things closely from a distance to make sure it's successful."
Great horned owlets are the first to be admitted to the Raptor Center each spring because these owls nest so early, usually starting sometime in February. The first owlets arrived on March 10 this year, with other species following on a later schedule:
"Great horned owls are first, followed by barred owl chicks, then small owls," Franzen-Klein noted. "The first red-tailed hawks are admitted around Memorial Day and the first bald eagles around July 4."
Young raptors eat a lot — about 25% of their body weight each day, equivalent to a 160-pound human eating 40 pounds of food a day. In the raptor's case, that's a lot of raw rabbit and rat.
Elaborate care is taken to allow young birds to think they're still in their nest, being fed at night by a parent owl. This is to avoid raising imprinted raptors that identify with humans.
In another case this spring, a very young great horned owl chick eagerly gobbled chunks of rat flesh, approximating its diet in the wild. The owlet had no idea the raw meat was being offered on the tip of a long tweezers by a human covered head-to-toe in a camouflage suit resembling a shaggy shrub. The only light in the room was provided by a red-light headlamp worn by the human (see video of the young owl being fed at https://www.facebook.com/TheRaptorCenter/videos/1010047357123350/).
The Raptor Center urges the public not to handle any young raptors on the ground, unless the bird is in danger — on a road or when dogs or cats are around.
"Stay with the young bird and call us," Franzen-Klein says, noting that the center needs the bird's exact location to be able to return it to its nest. Check the Raptor Center's website for more tips on what to do.
The Raptor Center staff looks forward to nursery season, each year — after all, who wouldn't relish the chance to give little owls and hawks and eagles another chance at a wild life?
St. Paul resident Val Cunningham, who volunteers with the St. Paul Audubon Society and writes about nature for local, regional and national newspapers and magazines, can be reached at valwrites@comcast.net
Some dos and don'ts
1. If you find an infant raptor, don't feed or interact with it, but notice its exact location, giving it a GPS "pin," if possible, then contact the Raptor Center.
2. Postpone tree work until late summer or fall, if possible, to avoid harming nests, unless you're positive there's no nest in the tree.
3. Keep cats indoors. Many young raptors spend part of their lives on the ground and free-roaming pets present a risk.
4. Learn about raptors and other wildlife around your neighborhood, including when they nest and are active. Check out https://raptor.umn.edu for information about Midwestern raptors.
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