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Many thanks to Marie Winn, author of Red-tails in Love , andhttp://mariewinnnaturenews.blogspot.com/ for posting John Blakeman's thoughts on the injured Washington Square female, Violet, while I've been out of commission.
There is no hope for Violet. Absolutely nothing can be done to save, treat, or cure her debilitated foot. She's doomed. It is impossible for a hawk to live on only one leg. Sooner or later, the un-rested, always-stood-upon remaining foot will get bumblefoot, an infection and loss of tissue very similar to human bed sores. Once that begins, the hawk will die.
So far, bumblefoot hasn't set in, probably because she's able to spend some time in the air, allowing microcirculation in the foot. But in Dec and Jan, with 16 hours of cold nights, the leg will be stressed. The game will be over.
And nothing could be done to treat the dead foot if she is trapped. Bumblefoot and death would result, just as in the wild, but perhaps with a short delay.
The sad, biological truth is that Violet is doomed. My scenario is this. In a few weeks (or sooner), bumblefoot will set in. Violet will become sick and sedentary, and will fly off to an obscure building nook or cranny and die without human observation. She'll just disappear, unseen.
With that, a new floater female will fly in and in a week or less take up with Bobby. Pair bonding will occur. A new pair will take up reproduction at the NYU nest.
And once again, the band had absolutely nothing to do with any of Violet's tribulations. It was properly and safely applied, at the right size and right place (the tarsus), five years ago. The injury was a squirrel or rat bite that crushed bone and ripped tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. Healing was never complete. It couldn't have been. Too much tissue damage. She was fortunate to survive as long and as well as she did.
And some will ask how I can know all of this. Well, in the 70s and 80s I did hawk rehabbing and had several foot-injured hawks, caught in animal traps, with crushed toes or foot joints. I was able to save only those where a single toe was crushed, by the toe's amputation. When there was greater damage, the hawk had to stand on the uninjured foot, which in time, usually a few weeks, always had lethal bumblefoot set in. My vet and I tried tetracycline treatments for the bumblefoot infection, but it never works. The bird always dies. Bumblefoot in one-legged hawks is universally fatal.
Violet isn't the first haggard (adult) or immature red-tail to die from injuries caused by prey attempted in capture. Rabbits and jack rabbits can give lethal and skin-tearing kicks. Even rats, if not quickly dispatched, can bite severely. And wings can be broken on limbs or fences when plunging onto fleeing prey. Many red-tails die with broken wings on the ground.
Life for red-tails is not always as calm or tranquil as it can appear in a Manhattan nest cam or through a pair of binoculars there. Sadly, we are witnessing the other side of red-tail life, the inevitable death that eventually frequents them all.
--John Blakeman
As it does for all forms of life, including ourselves. Therefore we must not forget to use the time we have, to watch, to truly see, to revel in the beauty of all life, including our own.
When the time comes for these beautiful, smart, infinitely fascinating creatures, these well loved Red-tailed Hawks who have shared their lives with us, to go before us, we grieve deeply their passing.
Without fail we wonder if we could not have done more to help them, somehow to have eased their last hours, and perhaps to have kept them among us for a little longer.
There isn't a day that goes by that I do not think of sweet Tristan of the Cathedral looking down at me with a "So-there-you-are-where-have-you-been?" expression, or of no nonsense Charlotte, clever Pale Male Jr. training Big and Little to about face in the air, long-lived, wise Hawk-eye, the giant Athena, Riverside Dad building nest after nest, of Houston St. Dad and his son Hous, both we did manage to lay hands on near the end but who left us anyway, and Lola the valkyrien who brilliantly battled intruders with her mate Pale Male but who also diligently and with another kind of courage sat on eggs year after year that never hatched.
And though, in some cases, we may not have been there to "help them" at the end, not showing themselves to us was their choice. Perhaps if they had to go, even perhaps with pain and discomfort, they preferred to pass free in their own land-- with their mate, the trees they had roosted in, a view of the beautiful sky they had flown, and with the wind rippling gently through their feathers.
Donegal Browne
Sent to me by Kris G....
I feel so bad for Violet!
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