Grace is doing great. She had a lot of old dead tissue in her mouth removed on Tuesday, and is back to eating a lot and bathing again. Here you can see she likes to make a mess of her pool fairly quickly after us cleaning it. I am still trying to get her to eat the "good stuff" - Mazuri waterfowl feed which is meant for birds like her and so much better than bread or corn (which are just full of sugar). But she shuns it. She has little time left with me, ODFW is deciding what they would like to do with her and when. A decision that I am glad is not in my hands but those who know best. She has a lot of support with our local fish and wildlife professionals. She is a lucky bird, she has many advocates. Here are some pictures of her tongue now after a couple days post tissue removal (debridement). Look at that clean, pink tongue. Thanks to Dr. Cooney for cleaning her up. Grace has had lots of other support too from my network of waterfowl rehab experts around the country that I have been consulting with. In particular, IBRRC, Michele Goodman, and Dr. Miller. Grace is my first swan and I really was not set up for her. I have ideas on what I would do differently now though. She's been a good sport though thankfully, a sweet bird. Though any bird with a 7 foot wing span who has quite a strike with that huge wing is both intimidating and can hurt you. So, though she has been "sweet" she is a challenge, specially if you have to catch her 2x a day to medicate her. Grace will get rid of this remaining tissue fairly soon. It will likely just get removed naturally as she eats. Her feet are iffy and she needs to get off of them. Swans more than anything need to be on water and in rehab if they are not able to swim in a large pond or stock tank, they will develop foot issues quickly. In fact for most water birds (grebes, loons, merganzers, and many ducks) captivity injuries make up the the main reasons these birds become unreleasable. It is often better to just let the bird heal on its own after some minimal treatment than letting the bird languish in rehab. Few places who do these birds now even keep swans, most just treat and release. Grace was somewhat different due to the extent of her injuries. Foot injuries are most likely as birds that are not adjusted to bearing weight on their feet for long periods (like Canada Geese do in comparison), wind up with the toe joint swelling. These then become hot spots - like bed sores - and then can become abraded and raw. Infection can ensue. Release is wisest at that point as continued weight bearing will make it worse. There is only one thing the bird needs to do - swim. Their feet - as most water birds - will dry out from not being water nearly 24/7. They can also get keel (chest bone) injuries from bearing weight on their chests. When in water, the body is fully buoyant and supported. Waterproofing is next to go, if not sooner. Waterproofing is about the proper structure and alignment of the feathers. In rehab they preen less simply from stress. Well that was likely more than you ever wanted to know about rehabbing swans! My apologies. Will let you know what happens next soon. This is the underneath of Gracee's tongue Jan 5. You can see the extent of dead tissue and the deep hole still under her tongue. All yellow and black tissue is dead. It will be removed by the vet soon. Right now it is acting as a bandaid.
Gracee is eating really well now, and bathing and preening a lot. If she gets a good bill of health from the vet on Tuesday, she will get ready to be released. Thanks to all who have donated. Thanks to your donations Gracee has pads for her feet, a deeper water pool, and other things. She is also eating the best bread I can buy (since she snubs the good food for her that she should be eating!!!). Note: bread is NOT that great for waterfowl, or other birds actually, see my previous posts. Grace is a local Bend, OR bird...she is part of our local community. We need to band together for her sake and help lobby the ODFW to get her a breeding island of some kind. Stay tuned, I will know more tomorrow about her release. Elise Picture to come later today. The following is from a local Bend resident who has been watching Grace for awhile....I think you will find her comments very interesting, as I did. "I have watched those swans several times a month since 2005, so I'm sad to see the end of the breeding pair. Hopefully, with your efforts, "Grace" will return to Swan Lake, at least. I don't know how long swans live, but I would guess that she is beyond her reproductive years. But perhaps she could still breed, and the only reason that there were no broods the past two years is the disappearance of the good nesting sites. They want to build their nest on a tiny island away from shore. Each of the chosen sites has been washed away in high-water periods after several years, and finally there are none there at all. If they had to nest on the shore, the nest would have been prey for predators, I'm sure. (After the first site washed out, someone built a platform that they used for two years; but then it, too washed out. They found a new but riskier site that submerged several times, once after they had built their first nest--they built another that year. It is completely gone now.) "Having observed swan behavior there over an 8-year period, watching 6 broods raised to adulthood, I would venture that none of the swans that gather there in the winter are truly wild; they behave like, and are treated like, the children of the breeding pair. They seem to gather here when the ice encroaches elsewhere, rather than migrate, because they were raised here and know that there is always some open water. The most I ever saw in the winter was 12. Before Christmas this year, there were six (including Grace). Now there are five. "When breeding season arrived each spring, most of the winter swans would leave, and the parents would gradually distance themselves from the several that stayed with them, for the most part identifiable as the brood of the previous year because they still had traces of gray plumage that soon disappeared. One of these, presumably a female, was allowed to stay quite close to the nest and the new brood, and she helped protect them and kept them company as they grew." Anyone else have interesting observations, please let me know. ODFW plan on reintroducing Grace to the Pond and finding her a mate. However, given the above....I think the community will need to pull together to get her an island...not sure what that would look like. Open to ideas.... Elise Gracee is bringing in the new year very well. Her tongue is improving quickly, with a lot of new, pink tissue. There is still a good bit of damage in her tongue and lips so she has a good bit of recovery to do before she is fully well. We discovered when she finally fully opened her wings on new years day that in fact she is a pinioned bird. This was missed on intake but that happens. Pinion means that a bird's wing has been cut so that it cannot fly, usually at the wrist. After speaking with Simon at ODFW, we are concluding that Gracee was a bird that was bred to reintroduce Trumpeters back to the Deschutes River and Central Oregon in the mid-1990s. They pinioned her so that she would stay at the river and breed. Which she has in fact done. Gracee had a mate, also pinioned and put on the river with her in the 90s. They were together until the recently when her mate was killed during the very cold spell that CO had in early December. He had broken his wing and was unable to get away with all or the ice and cold. So Gracee has had a rough time of it...first losing her mate of over 18 years, then the lure. The fact she is one of our local birds is excellent news. First, it means she is "our" bird...someone who really is part of our local community and who has made CO and Bend her home for nearly 2 decades. Second, it means that she will be safer from predators and can continue to be watched and cared for when we get her back on the river. She is now using her full 16'x20' aviary, and has a much larger pool. It is still an interim pool until we get the larger one set up. She is eating less good food....another sign she is a local bird! If you know anything about ponds and pumps and have a couple of hours to volunteer...please call me. Here's how to help Gracee once she is back to the river. Never feed white bread. Birds actually do not have the enzymes to digest the yeasts in bread and they also cannot pass gas...which means that when the yeast ferments from not being digests, Gracee and other birds cannot get the gas out easily, leading to bellyache. If you really feel like you need to feed the birds...use ground corn from a feed store, or better yet organic lettuce (which is not that expensive for just a few tosses of food to them). And since the lure likely was in Mirror Pond...if you fish, please do not lose your line and never use treble hooks, barbed hooks, or just don't fish there. And also lobby for degradable fishing line..which interestingly it used to be! Elise Thanks to Marilyn & Craig Miller and Alice & Cal Elshoff, and several other concerned folks who called Bend Parks & Rec or ODFW, Grace was rescued by Simon with OR Dept of Fish and Wildlife. A treble hook was impaled into the bird's tongue and fishing line wrapped around it, causing some of the tongue tissue to die and the tissues to swell. No doubt this gal must have been in a lot of pain. She could not eat either, so she needs to gain some weight. Dr. Jeff Cooney, with the help of Jeanette Bonomo and Bend Veterinary Clinic, got the hook out and the bird is now on antibiotics and a pain med. She will recuperate here until ready for release. Two days into rehab, her tongue looks somewhat better (tongue tissue heals relatively fast), whatever dead remains will have to be sloughed off and regrown (that may take time). If she can fend for herself, we will release her. If she needs more time she will have to stay in rehab longer. Grace needs sponsors, these are expensive birds to rehabilitate. She really needs more food - a specialty type of waterfowl food that must be ordered (not a chicken or duck food from the feed store). If you want to help her out, and us at Grebe Acres, please consider donating, any amount can be helpful. Stay tuned for updates. (And please try to not lose your fishing line and lures....she likely bit down into some vegetation and got the lure into her tongue). Grace in her inside caging. Tomorrow she goes outside to an aviary set up for her with appropriate substrate for her sensitive feet and soon a water set up too (hopefully). Look a that pretty face! Here is what fishing line and tackle can do to a bird's tongue...the yellowish and dark colored areas on the tongue and bill are dead tissue. She will have to grow this back, hopefully she is able to do that with time. Just got this little one in, landed in a school parking lot and was found near a fence. This is a type of grebe, they are a diving and fish eating water bird. They are not a duck.
They are excellent swimmers; better swimmers than flyers actually. They fly through the water like penguins and their feet are positioned in the rear of their bodies like penguins, rather than below them like a duck. They breed in northern area lakes and rivers, then migrate to warmer southern climates in the winter. They accidentally land on wet pavement thinking it is water when distressed and needing to make an emergency landing. They can also land on solar panels, and other shiny objects that look like water. They usually make one long migration, but if they have lost energy for some reason or are caught in a bad storm - or hit by a nasty cold front in this one's case - they will try to get out of the air and land. Unfortunately, the positioning of their legs means they can not get into the air again as they are not designed to walk or run on land. They hobble only. And because they weight a good bit for their size and their wings are small for their bodies (designed more for fast swimming to catch fish), they are unable to take off again. Grebes run on the water a bit before taking off, so not any old pond will do for take off. So they can get stuck on small bodies of water that humans put them on thinking they are helping. If you find one, call a rehabber. We can find out WHY the bird needed to land, make sure it is ok from the impact of landing on a hard surface, and get it to an appropriate take off point, or even help with the migration. (Oh, the red eyes allow them to see under water really really well). Pretty sure this is a yellow rumped warbler, hit a window, spent a warm, cozy, but depressed night with me, now is feeding up and getting ready to fly. Please put netting on your windows, or email me for a handy flyer on what else you can do to protect birds from the invisible structures that kill millions upon millions of birds annually, globally.
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