Rimouski heading back to the wild at his undisclosed location in southern Québec. (©UQROP).

For only the second time in Project SNOWstorm’s 11 seasons of telemetry tracking, we’ve fitted a previously injured, rehabilitated snowy owl with a transmitter to document its movements and long-term survival, a project we’ve been working toward for several years at the urging of our team of wildlife veterinarians and the rehabilitation community beyond, which wants to know how well rehabbed raptors actually survive post-release.

The snowy owl in question is a young male that was found Nov. 20 near Rimouski, Québec, with an injured right wing, the result of either a vehicle collision or from flying into an electrical transmission wire. He was taken to Union Québécoise de Réhabilitation des Oiseaux de Proie (UQROP), where Dr. Guy Fitzgérald and his team have since 1986 treated more than 13,000 raptors. An examination and radiographs (X-rays) showed that the bones were dislocated from their normal position, preventing the elbow from moving normally. As SNOWstorm’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Erica Miller, explained to me, a dislocation like this prevents the bird from flying and also stretches the tendons and ligaments around the joint. Not only is it extremely painful, the damage to the joint quickly becomes permanent, so time was of the essence.

Rimouski’s right wing (on the left in this radiograph) had a dislocated elbow, an especially painful and tricky injury to fix. (UQROP)

The bird was anesthetized, and the elbow joint was manipulated back into place. The wing was then carefully wrapped to hold the bones in the proper position while the swelling in the muscles, ligaments and tendons healed. The bird was again anesthetized 10 days later and the wrap was removed; radiographs at this time showed the elbow joint was in its proper position. Physical therapy, through massage and manipulation under anesthesia and later, a lot of exercise in a large aviary, were performed to help ensure the bird regained full use of the wing.

By mid-December, the owl was flying normally in the hanger-like aviary UQROP uses to exercise large raptors, and he passed all the final tests before release with flying colors. Before he flew off, however, Guy fitted him with a lighter version of the standard GPS/GSM transmitters we normally use, one weighing 30 grams instead of the typical 45 grams. The bird, which we’re calling Rimouski after his capture site, was released Dec. 17 somewhere south of the St. Lawrence River. Although we’ll give regular blog updates on his progress, we’re not going to publish a tracking map for him in order to give him as much space as possible.

Rimouski spent 10 days with his wing carefully repositioned and wrapped to allow the joint to heal. (©UQROP)

This is, as I said, only the second time we’ve placed a transmitter on a previously injured owl, and the first time we’ve done so on a permanent basis. The first time, we collaborated with the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore to tag a juvenile female we dubbed Delaware, which suffered a wing injury at a local airport in March 2014. (She had originally been trapped and banded a few months earlier by Steve Huy at Delaware Seashore State Park.) She healed well, but needed to over-summer at the zoo. At the zoo’s request we fitted her with a transmitter to see how well she would adapt to life back in the wild, then released her on Assateague Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She was clearly moving and hunting normally, so after a month we recaptured her and removed the transmitter.

We’d shied away from tagging rehabbed owls for so long in part because the fate of such birds is obviously uncertain, and to be honest, if a released owl came to a bad end, we suspected some people would blame us or the transmitter. We now have more than a decade’s worth of experience across more than 100 snowy owls to show the transmitters are not a problem, and the rehab community itself is increasingly interested in knowing how often all their hard work and expertise is successful. While this owl was tagged under Dr. Fitzgérald’s Canadian federal and provincial permits, earlier this year we received permission from the U.S. Bird Banding Lab to do the same with appropriate rehabbed snowies on this side of the border — birds that will be screened by

Rimouski’s transmitter is housed in a standard case with normal solar panel, but is only two-thirds the weight of our usual transmitters. (©UQROP)

our veterinary team to make sure they are suitable candidates. Over the past summer, our partners at Cellular Tracking Technologies in New Jersey built three custom transmitters for us to our specifications.

Since his release, Rimouski appears to be moving in a completely normal manner, which is a testament to the care he received at UQROP. “Dislocations are one of the most difficult injuries to treat in birds, as the damage to the joint quickly becomes permanent and even when reduced (put back into place), the damage will allow the bones to slip out of place again, rendering the bird flightless,” Erica said. “Only if treated quickly after the injury occurs, and only when the bones are returned to precisely the correct position, will the joint heal completely. Kudos to Dr. Fitzgerald and his team for a rapid and successful treatment of this bird.” We’re wishing the young guy all the best, and expect we and the wider raptor rehab community will learn a lot from this new endeavor, which your support of SNOWstorm made possible.