Bad Rehabber Sentiments

By Troy Moritz

December 2001

I'm seeing some things disheartening things lately and I think it is worth talking about. I'm certain this message will piss off half of those who read it, but I'd rather be honest than popular. I of course, am talking about the overwhelming desire some people have to heal all God's creations. A lot of junior falconers have come from the ranks of some very foolish rehabbers and have learned incredibly bad habits. Along the way they also have come to the silly conclusion that being a rehabber makes them a raptor/wildlife expert, hah! The golden rule, "don't fix
it if it isn't broke" comes to mind. Some people aren't happy until they find and/or create a problem with their bird that they can then spend an atrocious amount of time curing. I cannot tell you what a sinking feeling I get in my stomach when I hear about people doing CBCs on raptors that show no signs of illness. These same people then flip out when the tests reveal that they have an ailment! Of course they have some amount of disease! If these people aren't happy that the bird doesn't have a life threatening ailment, they can surely create one by stressing the bird and giving it a 15% weight reduction while leaving it to stagnate for a few months. I'm certain you can then insure that the small amount of parasites in the bird's system will then manifest the symptoms so desired! It doesn't occur to these people that if the bird was flying and hunting it would be less stressful and would keep the bird in better health than putting the bird on its ass for 6-12 weeks with no exercise while fixing a MINOR ailment. What the typical pain-in-the-ass rehabber quasi-falconer does (I am not talking about you good rehabbers) is
overmedicate... and then kill the bird. Of course this is not before taking all the wild spirit out of the bird and turning it into some sort of personal healing experience for their own life. While not trying to get death threats
showered on myself, I digress further.

Rehabbing and falconry is not supposed to be the method of healing for life
problems for human beings. People who have been abused focus in on
rehabbing/falconry in a very sick way at times, and it impairs their judgment.
Aren't' you supposed to be getting the bird back into the wild ASAP, via
hunting or permanent release?

I could site several cases of these atrocities by name to piss off a lot of
people, but I won't... well, maybe a few:

-general anesthetic on a daily basis to treat a raptor. (as seen on TV
praising a rehab center in Florida) They cast the bird and put the bird fully
under every day to treat bumblefoot. The odds for a bird surviving daily
anesthetic for 30 days is 0%. Anesthetic is for surgery, and surgery should be
a rare occurance!

-Lack of hoods to SPITE traditional falconry techniques. How can these people
operate without hoods!?! No bird ever died from being hooded, they die from
the shock of treatment that could be avoided if the raptor couldn't see. This
is the key reason that most rehabbers have such a difficult time keeping
accipiters alive. 4000 years of history have proven that hoods relieve stress
and make medical procedure easy to carry out.

-If the birds are not in and out of the treatment center in a few weeks time,
there chances of survival when released are incredibly low. Some people
believe an accipiter or small falcon can be kept in a small box or pen for
months and then can be cut loose to hunt on their own. The bird isn't fit
enough to catch it's first meal (a precious songbird) and will die shortly
thereafter of starvation. Birds need pseudo-falconry training before release
if they have been kept for months in rehab captivity!

-Incidents such as the poor Red-Shouldered hawk I heard about
drive the point home. If I remember correctly the rehabber was sick because
the hawk escaped and "couldn't fend for itself". The person spent weeks trying
to catch the bird but it wouldn't accept the bait! (because it wasn't hungry!)
Did it occur that if the bird is alive 6 weeks after release IT IS HUNTING ON
ITS OWN?!? The person should feel ashamed that they kept this animal
imprisoned when it could have lived in the wild all along!

-Injections and CBCs, intermuscular/intervascular medications, etc. While I
acknowledge that these things can save a birds life, they are used
inappropriately at least 80% of the time. The amount of birds that die under
this line of treatment is staggering. Save it for the hail-Mary last course of
action.

This is not intended to be a spiteful anti-rehabber note. It is to drive home
the point that good judgment and falconry experiences (even if not licensed)
are critical to giving injured birds any chance at a life back in the wild. My
intent is also to point out that whether you are rehabbing or hawking, the
question is the same. "how quickly can I get this bird hunting?" Ask yourself
this question every day and dispense with the superfluous medical treatment.