An adolescent owl that was found stuck in a concrete mixer in southwestern Utah is finally on the mend, flying free and maybe a bit wiser from the ordeal.
The great horned owl somehow made his way into the truck-mounted mixer in late October and was discovered by workers pouring concrete at a resort construction site. Lucky for him, a series of people gave a hoot about his predicament.
Workers hosed the bird down before it was wrapped in a towel. It took days for employees at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab to pick the concrete from the bird's face, chest and right wing, using forceps to carefully crack the dried debris and cleaning the feathers with toothbrushes and dish soap.
The owl started its long recovery at an aviary run by the organization, and employees anxiously waited for it to grow new feathers. But the bird didn't molt as predicted. In early May, he underwent a procedure called imping, which uses adhesive to graft donor feathers onto existing shafts.
“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” said Bart Richwalski, a supervisor at the sanctuary.
Great horned owls typically have tufting on the edges of some of their feathers that allows them to fly quietly as they hunt. But the concrete frayed the rescued owl’s feathers and caused it to make a whooshing sound while flying.
To prepare for the imping procedure, sanctuary staff examined the owl's feather patterns every few weeks and snipped damaged shafts in advance. The owl was anesthetized and the donor feathers from a similarly sized owl that had died were laid out nearby to replicate each wing. The staff then cut the feathers to the necessary length, lined them up and adhered them to the bird.
By the end of the 90-minute procedure, the owl had 10 new primary feathers and a secondary feather on his right wing. But then came the real test: could he fly silently?
The bird was placed in a large aviary to recover from the anesthesia and quickly took flight after awakening. Richwalski used a decibel meter to measure the sound of the owl's wingbeat and determined its flight was quiet enough for it to safely be released. The owl hovered for a moment while the aviary roof was retracted, gained speed and then flew out into the wild.
“It feels so, so good. I think my heart finally started beating again. The nervousness was starting to overtake the excitement, but once I saw him fly out that opening in the roof, it just was, it was a sight to see. It was so fun,” said Richwalski, who has cared for the owl since picking him up at the construction site.
Karla Bloem, executive director of the Minnesota-based International Owl Center, said imping has been practiced by falconers “for eons” and is a very effective treatment.
“I've never heard of it not lasting, because you use some pretty good stuff when you're doing imping,” said Bloem, who has studied great horned owls for nearly three decades.
She added that it would be OK if a couple of the grafted feathers fell out. The bulk of them just need to stay put until the owl can grow new ones in the coming summer months.
“And now it just needs to figure out, ‘whoa, I’m back in the big world again, hunting,’" she said. “Find a territory ... you know, find one of the opposite sex and settle down and have kids.”