Hi Jennifer,
We run a small animal rehab centre north of Stockhom in Sweden. Due to some problems with rooms, activity has slowed downed a bit. Usually we have about 1200 patients each year – all species of birds and small mammals (mostly hedgehogs). Mortality rate is about 50 percent. This is not too bad as the patients usually arrive in a pretty bad shape.
I’m sending you a pictures from the centre of a Sparrow owl, Glaucidium passerinum. This is Sweden’s smallest owl.
The owls are are not much bigger than a sparrow, but very greedy bird which eats prey much larger than themselves!
This individual suffered from a broken wing.
Cheers,
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Beautiful Ann regardless of its dinner habits
Gavin thanks!
Maybe a mortality rate of 50% seems high , but our success rate with orphan animals is very high and they have been succesfully released into the wild and made it.
We had one example of this. A gull was released and found many hundreds of kilometers away.
Some people say , let nature have its go. OK, that is right ,but human induced ( or cat, dog ,car , oil spills etc) accidents is a major to cause to many injuries. We feel its fair to give the animals a second chance.
I also want to point out that we only release animals into the wild that we are sure to made in the wild and we never keep wild handicapped animals. They are euthanised.
You and the rehab centre are doing great work Ann. You should feel very proud.
Ann: In Australia we let many injured wild birds end up in sanctuaries and small zoos. Large raptors that can’t fly are the most likely specimens in the big bird aviaries.
A selection of links on our zoos in general
http://www.trowunna.com.au/birds.htm
http://www.zoo.org.au/healesville/newbirths.htm
http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/website/category/ZXOA74~Organisations+and+Networks;+Zoos
Libby,
Thanks for your very kind words!
Gavin,
I was posting this euthanasia information from Sweden actually to bring up this issue for discussion, was looking for a respons…
I know countries as the UK as well , keep handicapped animals in small zoos etc.
Well, IMO a very experienced person must decide if it is better to euthanise a bird or let it live.
We had a case in the centre, last year. A sea eagle or white tailed eagle, whose status is endangered , suffered from a broken wing…. she undergone surgery, but it failed….and I really must question if maybe it would have been worth to save it at a big zoo etc. Especially raptors life could be useful to save for their endangered status etc.
Many birds in Sweden are euthanised as they suffer from incurable wing or leg injuries( it has gone too long time when they broke the wing or leg) and I really want to open up this topic for discussion. Thanks!!!!
And Gavin, I think Australia is much more developed than Sweden in re taking care of handicapped animals.
We are a hunters nation, still the rifle rules, and our legislations permits no handicapped animals.
Again, feel this is an issue that needs to bring up and exchanging experinces with other nations, zoos and sanctuaries etc.
Hi Ann,
A lot of the native animals in the captive institutions I have worked in have been ill or injured wild animals and compromised in some way and deemed not suitable for release. Most of the seals at one place I worked were originally ‘stranded’ and had eye injuries, etc so were kept and trained for presentations.
Euthanasia can be a delicate issue, and people need to be educated about the issue. Sometimes though it seems to me that wild animals are ethanased when they could live out their time educating people and breeding with captive-bred stock. I’d rather this than a healthy animal taken from the wild to be kept permanently in captivity, or a mostly healthy animal euthansed. Just my thoughts.
Gavin,
FYI, we sent two handicapped swans to a swan sanctuary in England two or three years ago. It costs as a fortune but we were going to send an owl as well , but now it is impossible or forbidden with this kind of traffic in the EU thanks to the bird flu.
And this is very sad??? because in Belgium they have many, many Arctic owls in a little zoo, and they had the opportunity to be released into the wild in the Arctic Sweden.But the authorities stopped this due to bird flu scare….
People got hold of these endangered Arctic owls in some mysterious ways due to the Harry Potter fever….
Libby, a constructive comment….
And yes some animals are indeed more suitable for captive conditions than others..
And some animals are almost hopeless to help at all…a fullgrown hare would get a heart attack if a human took care of it , in contrast to little hare babies that are easy….
Ann: Since I’ve been on my feet for about 16 hrs while trying to remain entertaining this has to be a brief collection of notes on a deep subject. I choose Victoria as an example of Australia’s response to the potential outbreak of bird flu
Shooters and bird flu
http://www.fga.net.au/www/251/1001127/displayarticle/1002288.html
Bio security issues
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/nreninf.nsf/LinkView/92B9EDDDA1EAC375CA256E78000ADA1D0794975CC16FA2E9CA256E8C0006B8EF
Ban duck hunting?
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/nreninf.nsf/LinkView/92B9EDDDA1EAC375CA256E78000ADA1D0794975CC16FA2E9CA256E8C0006B8EF
IMHO we have the potential to quickly wipe out pockets of migrating wild birds known to threaten the whole population via a keen local interest in wild fowl as game since most shooters I meet take great pride in their “sport”. I keep on hearing a lot about numbers over the decades.
Some acquaintances I know can’t give it up but move on to another club sport with muzzle loaders and fixed targets. Even then some still want to cheat on their new mates by building replica weapons that have an “edge” in competition. Spoilsports!
In any given year since retirement I have met hundreds and hundreds of collectors of various things including guns, trophies, militaria, badges, souvenirs and many other things. I study each one if I can so I can hook them with some of my stuff.
Collecting anything in numbers is status just like car racing, properties and wealth.
It drives amateur fishing and hunting however in more recent decades it drives other things like wild life photography. We can each own something different in a snapshot.
Digitising enables us to share a bit of ourselves this way on the web and that’s a big progression for modern society.
While roaming the www I came across this doc “Victorian hunting guide 2007” Dept Sustainability and Environment where the Minister for Water, Environment and Climate Change adds some credibility to the 3 doz pages of good advice on firearms stc.
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/CA256F310024B628/0/D921988A5881C10ECA257291007F086E/$File/Victorian+Hunting+Guide+2007.pdf
What is in dispute elsewhere is the duck season or lack of it. Guess why.
Clearly what’s not in dispute is the introduced deer population and the gun shops, nor the windup from Winchester on ammunition. Extraordinary!
A lot of hunting birds are territiorial, if they are taken away from their area they are unlikely to survive in another’s territory.
I read a story the other day in my paper. There is an increase in the number of female hunters in Sweden and they have an association now for this.
The story continued. A woman got a rifle or a shotgun as a birthday present and now the funniest thing she knows is shooting small birds in the forest on Sundays! Really, really crazy IMO, as you don’t get any meat etc from the bird.
This practise is very widespread in Europe.
It is especially popular to hunt birds in Malta as it is a major area for migratory birds.
Lots of wounded birds are reported and sometimes they use living birds as prey , hooked as a fishing bait….cruel!
It also belongs in the macho culture in Malta to shot endangered predatory birds….
Duck hunt seems also widespread throughout the world…
Now I always don’t feel disgust for hunters as sometimes/often some hunters feed the deer and small game with additional hay during harsh winters and some hunters are doing the good job , tracking animals that has been injured in car accidents etc.
Rog and Gavin,
You seem to be familiar with bird hunting and fishing…. I don’t know if you are familiar with the issue of lead poisoning in the nature…
It is very common that birds suffer from lead poisoning either from fishing gear or shots.
The topic is now under discussion and some authorities have proposed to ban all ammunition consisting of lead…
yeah yeah but the benefit of having a gun for hunting tiny creatures & shooting shadows is that if someone else with a gun tries to shoot you or your friend, you have a chance of stopping them (at least THAT’s the pro-gun logic the punters have given us on this blog before). Gun ownership averts disasters, therefore it must be good for nature too.
(end sarcasm)
Gorgeous owl ann. Who wouldn’t want to save that wonderful bird?
Ann: We should not focus on lead in particular.
It’s been a long long time since I fired a shot gun at any wildlife however I grew up in the post war gun culture. My youngest uncles were still filling their cartridges at home in the late 40’s to keep costs down. In the 50’s many of us poured our own lead sinkers too. I had access to sheet lead scraps from the acid plant and parchment mill so I “rolled” my own sinkers. Lunch time was there was so busy as I also had the “die” to press wobblers out of scrap copper and brass. Eventually the bosses had an enquiry on stores the mysteriously disappeared. A lot of good metal finished up in the drink.
Stalking river fish later on in low water I uncovered vast quantities of the stuff and it usually included masses of tangled nylon line around every snag so I began to worry. But the greatest piles of nylon occurred along the rocky beaches. It was amongst the gear deliberately lost from cargo ships on their way to our international port.
Ann; all creatures in the wild suffer greatly from our excesses, the deliberate dumping and the sport. Unfortunately the odds today in their favour are zilch.
Lead under the skin after near fatal impacts is one problem; lead in the environment is another. My father taught me to carefully look for every piece of shot in a fresh carcass.
He wore a hole in his upper lip nearly all his life from a hot mouth full after a boyhood shooting misshape. Friends hey!
A few of my acquaintances carried shrapnel after ww2. They don’t tend to die early if they survived their original wounds. The body is pretty good at locking up stuff it doesn’t like.
Dad reckoned a shooter should give up the sport when they had to fill a rabbit with lead in order to knock it over. You shouldn’t eat bruised bodies either.