Will the Bird Survive (and for How Long)?

Just a tip for the future. If you find yourself in a situation like this again, the best thing to do is call animal control, a local wildlife rehab facility, or the Fish and Wildlife Service. If you don't have contact info for those, call the police (non-emergency) and they can put you in touch with the appropriate person.
Having worked with rehabs, unfortunately many animals are injured further by someone's good intentions. Even just holding a bird wrong can cause irreparable damage. The best thing for you to do is to get someone who knows what they are doing out there.
 
I saw a similar situation unfold on one of those "Animal Rescue" TV shows once. A woman called them to rescue a young crow who was all tangled up in a tree. By the time they got him down, he was so badly injured they decided he couldn't be rehabilitated and put him down. :(

I don't know if it was the exact same situation, though, because I can't remember the exact details of the crow's injuries. I think both of his legs might have been mangled beyond repair, which would obviously be worse than only one.
 
Not_a_Nautilus said:
I saw a similar situation unfold on one of those "Animal Rescue" TV shows once. A woman called them to rescue a young crow who was all tangled up in a tree. By the time they got him down, he was so badly injured they decided he couldn't be rehabilitated and put him down. :(

I don't know if it was the exact same situation, though, because I can't remember the exact details of the crow's injuries. I think both of his legs might have been mangled beyond repair, which would obviously be worse than only one.
Click to expand...


That can be a problem, apparently sometimes if an animal does not have a resenable chance of being released it is put down. I have raised joeys before and they are happy living around the house on the lawn and usually leave eventually. I once found one which had a wonkey leg. I could have raised it and even with one crook leg it would have been fine around the house eating the lawn. My wife took it to the vet to see if anything could be done with the leg. The vet looked at it and said it had nerve damage from when its mother was hit by the car and would never be able to be released. He would not allow it to be taken home and put it down on the spot.

In the case of the bird which started this page, cutting off the leg and releasing it seems to have been the right decision. I have been told by someone I know how many years ago his cat had a bad and infected wound and its whole leg was no good. As this was many years ago his father did a similar thing to what was done to the bird, and cut the leg off. The cat recovered with only 3 legs. Today we would all take the cat to the vet, but in the past vets were only for special cases.
 
Will the bird...

Wildlife rescue agencies commonly kill anything that will not be releasable, although in many cases [flight-impaired gulls & waterfowl for example] the animal could gave many years ahead of it in a captive setting.
 
Yup, I had a crow that got shot in the wing and could not fly. Despite the fact that crows are perfectly legal to own here, and it was happy and healthy aside from not flying, when we took it to wildlife rehab the volunteers there lied to me and my father and told us the crow was illegal to own, and then they killed it about 10 minutes after we dropped it off.

We also made extra sure they knew we would take the bird back if they couldn't fix his wing, but they didn't really care.

Honestly I have very little respect for wildlife rehab here, as its just a bunch of asinine volunteers working the center and they kill the large majority of whatever is brought in. Last I was there it was a pathetically small number of birds being rehabbed as opposed to the vast numbers that they kill the instant the birds are brought in. Pretty much anything that can't be fixed easily/cheaply is put down.

AArrrgghhh I've gotten myself angry now. Drats.
 
It's even worse that nearly all 'non-game' wildlife is illegal to keep in most countries.
For a 'common' species, unreleasable condition means death.
They could find a lifetime care in owner's home, but get euthanised by officials instead.
For saving & keeping a protected animal, you can be fined and even jailed as for poaching.
Stupid laws.
 
Although it may not be worth posting at this point, I thought I'd mention that we spotted the one-legged bird as late in the year as late October/early November (can't remember correctly), but we've not seen him at all yet this spring, leading us to assume he hadn't survived the winter. :/

Well, all I can say is that had we not done anything the day we found him, he likely would've died that night, stuck up in that tree. I say, although the final decision we made wasn't the best, it was better than not trying to help at all.

I will be sure, though, to speak up for myself and for what I think should be done - and act much more calmly than I did that day - if another situation like this comes up.
 
AnaheimZoo said:
but we've not seen him at all yet this spring, leading us to assume he hadn't survived the winter. :/
Click to expand...

But even if he didn't, it doesn't necessarily mean it was because he was one -legged- could have been any number of causes.
 
Chlidonias said:
there's no way of knowing whether the bird will survive or not unless you find its corpse or see a little one-legged bird flying around. Birds can survive perfectly well with one leg so that's not a huge factor. In fact if the leg was twisted backwards then having that as a handicap would make it even less likely to survive than being one-legged. They do have very little blood in their bodies though (what with being small and all) so even a small amount of blood loss can be seriously detrimental. However if it flew off into the bushes and you saw it was still alive after quite a while (until it got dark as you said) then its probably safe to say it didn't bleed to death.

Basically, if it doesn't get an infection in the wound then it will probably survive.
Click to expand...

Hi, I'm looking for some advice. Thursday last week, one of the magpies I am friendly with in the park became caught in a rope hanging upside down in a tree. I called in the firebrigade, who cut her loose, but failed to take the rope off her foot. The next morning I found her hanging upside down again about fifteen meters up. She must have been there all night. I called in the council, and got them to rescue her with a cherry picker. I took her to a vet who cut the rope loose, and released her, but her leg was hanging down and destabilising her - as you said above - it was twisted backwards. I recaught her and took her back to the vet who x-rayed her and said all the ligaments and tendons were torn and the leg was dislocated and it was beyond repair, it had to be amputated. She is currently recuperating, she's having antibiotics and has had a small amount of pain killers for the last several days, as prescribed. I have been hoping to release her back to her mate and her family on Thursday morning. Ten days was the time I was told to hold her as that is how long stitches usually take to heal, but I'm keen to get her back into her wild and with the family she loves as soon as possible.
I've been told by both the RSPCA and Bonorong Wildlife Rescue now that she should just have been put down and I quote 'A bird with one leg is not viable for release'.
Is this true? Can she survive and thrive? I visit the magpies with a small amount of food every day, she will always have me to help if she struggles to forage. What is the best course of action here? I could not bear the thought of her being put down, so I rescued her myself. But I don't want to release her into a miserable existence in which she struggles to survive.
Can a bird - a magpie - indeed survive perfectly well with just one leg?
 
Bec said:
Hi, I'm looking for some advice. Thursday last week, one of the magpies I am friendly with in the park became caught in a rope hanging upside down in a tree. I called in the firebrigade, who cut her loose, but failed to take the rope off her foot. The next morning I found her hanging upside down again about fifteen meters up. She must have been there all night. I called in the council, and got them to rescue her with a cherry picker. I took her to a vet who cut the rope loose, and released her, but her leg was hanging down and destabilising her - as you said above - it was twisted backwards. I recaught her and took her back to the vet who x-rayed her and said all the ligaments and tendons were torn and the leg was dislocated and it was beyond repair, it had to be amputated. She is currently recuperating, she's having antibiotics and has had a small amount of pain killers for the last several days, as prescribed. I have been hoping to release her back to her mate and her family on Thursday morning. Ten days was the time I was told to hold her as that is how long stitches usually take to heal, but I'm keen to get her back into her wild and with the family she loves as soon as possible.
I've been told by both the RSPCA and Bonorong Wildlife Rescue now that she should just have been put down and I quote 'A bird with one leg is not viable for release'.
Is this true? Can she survive and thrive? I visit the magpies with a small amount of food every day, she will always have me to help if she struggles to forage. What is the best course of action here? I could not bear the thought of her being put down, so I rescued her myself. But I don't want to release her into a miserable existence in which she struggles to survive.
Can a bird - a magpie - indeed survive perfectly well with just one leg?
Click to expand...
There’s a one-legged Sea Eagle in the South of England that is holding territory with a mate and catching prey. If an eagle can adjust….
 
AnaheimZoo said:
Earlier this evening, about a little less than two hours ago, I was out in my backyard, ready to play some baseball with my father. We were about forty seconds into our "game" when he asked me if I had seen "the bird that was stuck." I had not.

Surely enough, there was a bird (I've been trying to identify this particular species for the longest) caught in an apple tree, with a pinkish string wrapped around its ankle multiple times, which my father later said must have been there for about half hour (why didn't he do something/tell me?!). The string was zig-zagging through many of the branches, so I figure that the bird must have been flying through and got caught, then started struggling to get off the branch. He began crying out and started flapping desperately a few times, til the point where he was hanging upside down.

Watching him suffer was too much, so my father decided to grab a ladder, and we tried to get him out. We didn't want to injure him at all, so we cut the branch that he was stuck on, and cut some of the string as well. However, we quickly noticed that he had been struggling far too long, as his leg was literally shredded, mangled and twisted backwards. At this point, my uncle and father, after evaluating the injury, decided that the leg was of no use to the bird (which was too obvious) and cut it off with a gardening tool (the plier-looking things, the name escapes me right now). I wasn't really for or against it, I was in slight shock, as was the bird (he was totally "calm" at this point - I figured he was shocked having been in my father's hands for a few minutes).

So, off went the leg, with his little bloodied bone sticking out. I was asking if there was a veterinarian nearby, which there was - but this option wasn't even seriously considered by my father or uncle (either because they simply didn't want to - they'd been working out back for a few hours - or because they thought "he would be okay").

So we went and placed him down, and, after a few seconds which seemed to last forever, he emerged from his trance-like state and flew off into a bush across the yard, where he was greeted by a relative/friend who had probably been waiting for him after hearing his cries. You could clearly see him struggle to perch, land, and move from branch to branch, and, after visiting the bush a few minutes later, I saw him just with his broken leg dangling, while the other was nestled under his body. He was just sitting there. It was getting dark, so I had to go inside, and, to be perfectly honest, I was tearing up. I'd never been in a situation like that, and I thought the whole thing was poorly executed (but what could I have done? I had no clue what to do). So, I have a few concerns/questions:

How hard is life for a bird with no leg (in this case, the bird is a passerine of some sort)? Could the injury be infected because a garden tool was used to "amputate" the leg? Will the injury properly heal with no bandages/immediate "cures" used? Does a bird bleed a lot when its leg is broken and, if so, can a bird die of blood loss? (I am very obviously not a bird person, I know relatively nothing about birds.) How long would you expect this bird to live? Once again, my father and I had no idea what to do, and my uncle is the type that just do something to get it over with, so I have no idea what was done right and done wrong. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Sounds to me like your uncle had the guts to do what needed to be done. I don’t understand why people are saying these horrible things to you. The bird was most definitely going to die if it was just left alone and has less of a survival rate if he had just left the shredded leg dangling about. The bird was already at risk for infection and blood loss from the mangled leg so cutting off the mess was the best way to help it in that situation. Not everyone has access to a wildlife rescue or the time to drive every injured animal to one. Sometimes you just have to let nature do its thing. I actually have 2 birds that come to my feeders with broken legs and they are doing just fine. One of them could probably do better without the leg sticking straight up in the air but it gets around just fine with its flock so I don’t want to risk injuring the bird more by trying to trap it and have its leg amputated. I bet that bird you saved is going about its business like nothing ever happened. Don’t feel guilty at all, and thank you and your family for helping it!
 
AnaheimZoo said:
Earlier this evening, about a little less than two hours ago, I was out in my backyard, ready to play some baseball with my father. We were about forty seconds into our "game" when he asked me if I had seen "the bird that was stuck." I had not.

Surely enough, there was a bird (I've been trying to identify this particular species for the longest) caught in an apple tree, with a pinkish string wrapped around its ankle multiple times, which my father later said must have been there for about half hour (why didn't he do something/tell me?!). The string was zig-zagging through many of the branches, so I figure that the bird must have been flying through and got caught, then started struggling to get off the branch. He began crying out and started flapping desperately a few times, til the point where he was hanging upside down.

Watching him suffer was too much, so my father decided to grab a ladder, and we tried to get him out. We didn't want to injure him at all, so we cut the branch that he was stuck on, and cut some of the string as well. However, we quickly noticed that he had been struggling far too long, as his leg was literally shredded, mangled and twisted backwards. At this point, my uncle and father, after evaluating the injury, decided that the leg was of no use to the bird (which was too obvious) and cut it off with a gardening tool (the plier-looking things, the name escapes me right now). I wasn't really for or against it, I was in slight shock, as was the bird (he was totally "calm" at this point - I figured he was shocked having been in my father's hands for a few minutes).

So, off went the leg, with his little bloodied bone sticking out. I was asking if there was a veterinarian nearby, which there was - but this option wasn't even seriously considered by my father or uncle (either because they simply didn't want to - they'd been working out back for a few hours - or because they thought "he would be okay").

So we went and placed him down, and, after a few seconds which seemed to last forever, he emerged from his trance-like state and flew off into a bush across the yard, where he was greeted by a relative/friend who had probably been waiting for him after hearing his cries. You could clearly see him struggle to perch, land, and move from branch to branch, and, after visiting the bush a few minutes later, I saw him just with his broken leg dangling, while the other was nestled under his body. He was just sitting there. It was getting dark, so I had to go inside, and, to be perfectly honest, I was tearing up. I'd never been in a situation like that, and I thought the whole thing was poorly executed (but what could I have done? I had no clue what to do). So, I have a few concerns/questions:

How hard is life for a bird with no leg (in this case, the bird is a passerine of some sort)? Could the injury be infected because a garden tool was used to "amputate" the leg? Will the injury properly heal with no bandages/immediate "cures" used? Does a bird bleed a lot when its leg is broken and, if so, can a bird die of blood loss? (I am very obviously not a bird person, I know relatively nothing about birds.) How long would you expect this bird to live? Once again, my father and I had no idea what to do, and my uncle is the type that just do something to get it over with, so I have no idea what was done right and done wrong. Thank you.
Click to expand...
What the hell is wrong with your uncle? If you couldn't take it to some sort of wildlife rehab center after removing the string it would have been kinder to humanely dispatch it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top