{"id":47994,"date":"2017-05-05T05:18:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T11:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=47994"},"modified":"2017-05-05T13:57:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T19:57:04","slug":"galileo-the-star-of-the-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/05\/galileo-the-star-of-the-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Galileo – The Star Of The Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m happy to report that Galileo is doing very well.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I attended a function hosted by HawkWatch International here in Salt Lake City. The primary purpose of the gathering was to inform HW supporters of their field efforts and research designed to learn more about the population health of the Short-eared Owl. Conservation biologist Neil Paprocki presented a summary of their efforts and what they’ve learned so far about this nomadic and difficult to study bird.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0the real star of the show was our old friend Galileo, the Short-eared Owl that Mia and I found hung up on barbed wire on June 19, 2016.\u00a0I had to\u00a0cut the wire to get the bird off the fence and his left wing was so mangled that he spent many months in rehabilitation at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah (WRCNU) before eventually being released to HW as an education bird (it was determined that he was unlikely to survive if released back into the wild).<\/p>\n

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This is\u00a0HW Education and Outreach Director Nikki Wayment with Galileo after yesterday’s function concluded. I’d only seen Galileo once since the incident with the wire and back then he was still\u00a0struggling to learn his new role as an education ambassador and accept his now pampered lifestyle but I was incredibly impressed by how far he’s come since then. He handles wonderfully on the glove, is no longer nervous and high-strung with people in close proximity and he actually seems to enjoy all the attention. He nibbles Nikki’s finger affectionately when she places her hand in front of his face and there seems to be a real bond between the two of them.<\/p>\n

Galileo lost all of his tail feathers during rehab and he struggled a little without them but I’m happy to report that he now has a new tail! All of his handlers simply adore him, including old friend and teaching colleague Tana Peery Hunter who is a dedicated volunteer at HW.<\/p>\n

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This is Galileo as Mia and I found him hung up on the wire back in June (apologies to regular blog followers who have seen this image before). Back then he was a recently fledged youngster just learning to fly and made the mistake of getting too close to the “devil wire”. One of his extremely concerned\u00a0parents is perched on a bush just out of frame to the right. Back then I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for the chances he’d survive his injuries, much less live a contented life at HW or anywhere else.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t be happier about this outcome (unless of course he’d been able to be released back into the wild). Kudos to WRCNU and HW for their heroic efforts!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – Readers will recall my concern about cutting that wire. Doing so is serious business in cattle country so I reported what I’d done to local ranchers, left them my contact info and offered to pay for the repair. One of the ranchers wasn’t happy about what I’d done (“You cut the wire for an owl? We hit them with our vehicles all the time.”) <\/em><\/p>\n

I still haven’t heard back from them and the wire has still not been repaired (I checked on it two days ago). I’m not going to worry about it any more…<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m happy to report that Galileo is doing very well.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,16,356],"tags":[35,3257,3376,614,2207,279,311],"class_list":["post-47994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","category-short-eared-owls","tag-asio-flammeus","tag-galileo","tag-hung-up-on-barbed-wire","tag-injury","tag-rehabilitation","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/short-eared-owl-9573-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-cu6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}