A young great horned owl that turned up covered in concrete is back in the wild after six months of care at a Utah sanctuary.
A good Samaritan found the owl in a concrete mixer in October and called Best Friends Animal Society headquarters, 80 miles away in Kanab.
After removing the concrete, the team at the nonprofit’s wildlife refuge, Wild Friends, found the owl needed new feathers to achieve silent flight, a necessity in the wild. They waited for the owl to molt and replace the damaged feathers naturally, but his spring molt was not going as predicted.
That pushed the Wild Friends team to take a training course in a procedure they had never done before, imping, which uses donor feathers and adhesive to replace damaged raptor feathers.
They received donated feathers from a wildlife rescue group in northern Utah after a great horned owl of similar size died.
To prepare for the procedure, supervisor Bart Richwalski tracked the owl’s feather patterns.
“We looked at his feathers every few weeks so we knew which ones would have to be done, snipping damaged shafts in advance.”
The imping took place on May 1. Best Friends staff veterinarian Kelsey Paras joined three members of the Wild Friends team for the 90-minute procedure.
The donor feathers were laid out to match each wing, allowing the team to line up each replacement feather, cut it to the needed length and adhere it while the owl was under anesthesia.
In the end, the team replaced 10 primary feathers and one secondary feather in the owl’s right wing. The left wing did not need any replacements.
“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” Richwalski said.
The team told GNN the new feathers will come out naturally during future molts.
“He’ll lose a couple of our imp feathers each year until he replaces that entire wing.”
After the successful procedure, the owl was prepared for release once he achieved silent flight inside Wild Friends’ large aviary.
When the owl started flying to the highest perch, Richwalski measured the sound of its wingbeat with a decibel reader and decided the flight was quiet enough for a safe release.
As the aviary roof slowly retracted, the owl hovered briefly before gaining speed and flying straight up and out into the wild.
Richwalski had cared for the owl since picking him up in St. George.
“I don’t know that my heart was beating until I saw him leave. I was beside myself, knowing that after all this time, he was healthy and back in the wild. It was such a good feeling.”
Judah Battista, Best Friends Animal Society’s chief sanctuary officer, said the owl’s recovery reflected the group’s values.
“Best Friends Animal Society believes that every animal has intrinsic value and the care that our team took with this owl really reflects that belief,” Battista said. “I’m so proud of the Wild Friends team for their incredibly hard work to get this owl to freedom.”
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