this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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For owls that are superb.
US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
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This can’t be right. I’ve been told it’s the windmills that are killing the birds.
(/s)
They are, and they are doing more damage to larger birds, like raptors and herons and such moreso than small songbirds. But as with anything, context is very important.
Many recent estimates have wind power killing 0.269 birds per gigawatt hour, vs 5.18 per fossils fuels. A problem with the accuracy of these numbers is that other critters can beat people to the dead birds before they get counted. Some people claim the number or bird deaths from windmills if off by a factor of 10. While very significant, that still has wind power as twice as safe for birds.
Since we're the owl club, we can see some owl specific numbers:
The grey bar is predicted deaths, the line the upper prediction. Top scales is estimated deaths per windmill. Bottom scales is # of species for the listed order. Number is indicated by the black dot in the grey bar. There are around 250 species of owl, so you can see their black dot is around there.
Plenty of human related things cause multitudes more deaths of birds per year though. All types of habitat destruction, fossil fuels, building strikes, car strikes, and cats dwarf the number or windmill fatalities.
This article has a pretty good writeup if you want more, and if you are super smart, this is the research doc that is the primary source for the easy to read one.
Large scale wind turbines are relatively new, so we're still learning how to mitigate there damage, some ideas are mentioned in that article, from changing the blade colors to more mindful loaction of the turbines.
Also interesting to note, the articles show bats are killed in significantly higher numbers than birds, and I've never heard that talked about.
Thank you for the info. I didn’t even realize how deadly fossil fuels are to birds. Unsurprising that Trump never talks about that when he’s pretending to care about birds.
They aren't great for us either. Most stats I saw estimate 5-8 millions deaths worldwide a year due to emissions causing cancer and other diseases. I'd much rather the windmill break up the skyline a bit. At least some people like wind turbines. I can't think of anyone that thinks coal plants are particularly attractive.
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