From Cuong Nguyen
I was speechless when I witnessed this large raven attacking the great horned owl. Both came out OK after that, and the great horned flew away. Shot was taken last year in Ottawa.
For owls that are superb.
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US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
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Corvids are fabulous birds! My blue jay family has been hanging out and taking my peanuts for 4 years now. When I worked from home, we had a deeper level of trust, and they'd call me when they'd arrive at my pine tree, and even when I'd come up the walk after checking the mailbox, one would spot me, head to the "feeding tree" and call the gang.
The crows at the clinic are some of my favorite non-raptors, because they are as smart as people say, and have very clear personalities, and some are real charmers.
Sadly, the only raven I've worked with so far was really sick, and it took all summer for us to learn just how bad off it was, but it was still just a huge and captivating presence to be around.
Corvid communication feels on a whole other level than other birds, and it makes me feel like I'm one of the people famous for working with primate or cetacean to human communication 😄
Iirc ravens live for 40 years, so probably you're well acquainted to each other.
No, this poor thing came into the clinic with a wing injury, we healed it up, and it was almost cleared for release, but its wing somehow broke again. We moved him out of the flight enclosure, but it just sat there all summer and never moved all that much. We didn't know if he was just lonely, as the only raven, or what.
Its condition just wouldn't improve and I never saw it eat much when I'd be on duty to feed it, so we sent it to get x-rays and it ended up that it had some kind of bone cancer or degenerative bone disease and all if its bones where just terrible, so we had to say goodbye to it.
It's the animal that I really felt sorry for out of all 4000ish patients we had this year because it felt like it was so close to freedom and then its health just plummeted, and all of us put so much into trying to save it, and then learning we probably just unknowingly prolonged it hanging around just feeling miserable for that extra time.... We've had to put down some absolutely gorgeous owls and other animals, but it's because we don't want them to hurt if they can't be saved. But with the raven, we had no clue it had such a harsh internal thing going on, because it can't tell us what is wrong with it if it's something we can't see... I just felt so bad for it, and I know a lot of others did too.
I really had little to do with it besides feeding it and cleaning up after it, and the whole experience really impacted me, so I can't imagine how many times a year our head rehabbers that have to make the decisions to put animals down or not have to deal with asking themselves if they made the right choices.
I didn't mean to be a downer, but I've never typed out my feelings on this before, and as I said, I've thought about this raven so much this year.
Thanks for sharing. Vets often tell me how hard it is to spot pain in most animals, because hiding pain is a defense mechanism.
Very true.
Even though our main focus as clinic volunteers is cleaning and feeding, that still gets us a lot of up close and hands on time with the animals after their initial diagnosis. If we keep our eyes out, even though we don't have the kind of training the rehabbers do, we can still call out when we see something isn't right, like they aren't eating, feel cold, have a parasite that slipped by, etc. and they can get another checkup that can help us to modify the care they're getting.
I've done all those things, and hopefully it has made a difference. We only have 2 full time people allowed to do the bulk of actual treatment, and with 4000+ patients a year, they don't get the time to keep rechecking the work like we do. We are the second (and third, fourth, fifth) sets of eyes for them!