The hostile hiss that sounds like steaming radiators on a below-zero day
actually emanates from five irate baby barn owls temporarily living in the Rocky Mountain Raptor Center’s emergency room.
Summer is the busiest month for raptor rehabilitators because of injured nestlings and storm victims. During one of the violent storms that raced through northern Colorado in May, the barn owls’ nest fell from its perch atop a grain silo, dumping two of the owlets outside the silo and three of them inside. Rescuers brought the birds to the raptor center’s treatment and rehabilitation facility in Fort Collins.
Like people and buildings, birds and other animals can be victims of violent weather. That’s especially true during nesting season, when a parent bird will stay on a nest to protect the young, often at its own expense.
A Swainson’s hawk rescued from the epicenter of the Windsor tornado illustrated how vulnerable even an adult bird can be.
Rescuers found the bird on the ground, immobilized by caked mud and dirt. The wind had packed mud, like mortar, between its feathers, and dried mud coated each feather’s vane and shaft.
“It was as aerodynamic as a brick,” said raptor center staffer Bob Francella.
Many baths, countless hours of preening and several weeks later, the hawk is almost dirt-free. Soon it will return to the wild — the main goal for nearly all rescued raptors. Some stay longer than others to allow broken bones to heal or because they require foster parenting, like the five rescued barn owlets, all orphans of the Windsor storm.
Like almost all newcomers, the five rescued owlets found themselves sharing a cage about the size of a large dog kennel. Newspapers, covered with a soft towel, padded the floor. A sheet draped across the metal door provided darkness and a sense of privacy that disappears when a staffer or volunteer lifts the sheet to see how the birds are doing.
“They don’t like us at all, which is good. We don’t want them to like us,” Francella said, letting the sheet fall back on the sibilant owlets.
The tall and affable Francella is the center’s director of public support, a title that means he spends a lot of time seeking financial donations to pay for food and upkeep. Each owlet eats from 5 to 8 ounces of rodents each day. That ain’t chicken feed.
The estimated tab covering food, medical care and upkeep for two dozen or so raptors disabled by the recent storms: about $30,000. (That figure doesn’t include the expense of feeding and care for the center’s other raptors — nearly 90 so far this year.)
In a typical year, the center’s birds eat 4.3 tons of food, mainly rodents. Many rescued raptors require surgery for broken bones; the center’s staffers know the fastest routes to the nearby Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
Not all the birds can be saved, especially if they have a complex fracture, which shatters a bird’s hollow bone. In those cases, rehabilitators hope for the best, but know they’ll lose some patients.
A few birds that can’t be released back into the wild remain at the center as educational birds and foster parents for orphaned chicks. Among those is a one-eyed screech owl, fostered last year by another owl.
Now, that owl is fostering a screech owlet, one of the Windsor storm orphans.
“The older one is not releasable, because of its blind eye, but it’s important to have these foster birds because they teach the young ones how to hunt and fly,” Francella said.
Claire Martin: cmartin@denverpost.com or 303-954-1477.
Three centers rehabilitate raptors
Colorado is home to three raptor-rehabilitation centers, all on the Front Range.
Anyone who finds an injured raptor must contact the Colorado Division of Wildlife (303-297-1192) or the Colorado State Patrol (303-239-4501). Those agencies can contact a wildlife field officer.
The centers offer tours, volunteer opportunities, school- and civic-education programs, and special events.
Birds of Prey Foundation, 2290 S. 104th St., Broomfield; 303-460-0674 and birds-of-prey.org
Raptor Rehabilitation Center, 4828 Nature Center Road, Pueblo; 719-549-2327
Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, 720-B E. Vine Drive, Fort Collins; 970-484-7756 and
