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Originally Posted by valleyforge  I don't doubt that they can cope well enough in care, or where food is being provided by a falconer Colin, but I've not known any bird with unilateral loss of sight become a viable candidate for release.
My experience with casualty BOPs is admittedly restricted to just tawny owls and common buzzards, but if you have some experience with one-eyed hawks/falcons I'd be very pleased if you'd share it or point us to a reference, anecdotal or otherwise.  |
I had a one-eyed female sparrowhawk for several years when I was in my early teens in the '70's. She was handed to me as an eyass, I was never quite sure how she damaged her eye. I was fortunate in that a family friend knew one of the first vets to specialise in raptors in the UK, so the spar got excellent (and cheap!) treatment. I subsequently hacked several spars in later years but was advised not to release this one as it was doubtful she would survive. I never flew her at quarry as I didn't want to risk losing her. In hindsight I think this was a wrong decision, if she'd been allowed to catch quarry she may have learned to compensate for her limited vision, with the advantage of a guaranteed meal at the end of the day whether she succeeded or not - an advantage no wild bird has. She certainly became adept at catching birds off her bow perch on the lawn (I treated her as a falconers birds rather than simply leaving her in an aviary, so she spent the night in a shed and her days on a bow perch). To be honest I used to scatter bread around her perch to entice birds in (not something I'd recommend now, but I was a kid at the time!) and she'd occasionally nail a sparrow (other species were either too wary, too fast, or both). I used to watch her through the window - she'd actually crouch down, using her perch as cover, then rocket out at incredible speed when she judged a bird was close enough - fascinating to watch.
I'd had her about four years when I needed her shed to look after someone's African hawk eagle that had bumblefoot (the bird had to be free-flying so I couldn't keep them both in the same shed!), so I passed her on to a friend who had rehabilitated many raptors (and is still one of the few people I'd trust to rehab birds of prey). Unfortunately, she'd started fitting (a common problem with spars at this time, possibly due to a lack of vitamins in day-old chicks) and died around six months later.
I'm not sure if she would have survived in the wild, but I wish I'd flown her at quarry - it might have given me more of an idea how she might have fared. She was incredibly tame, probably due to all the handling she got due to the problem with her eye. She would actually tuck her head under her wing and go to sleep on my fist on occasion, something I've never seen in a non-imprint spar.
Cheers
Jonathan