A great horned owl found covered in concrete has flown to freedom after six months of care at a Utah sanctuary.
A good Samaritan found him in a concrete mixer in October and called the Best Friends Animal Society headquarters 80 miles away in Kanab.
After removing the concrete, the team at the nonprofit’s wildlife refuge, Wild Friends, realized the young owl required new feathers to achieve silent flight, which is a necessity in the wild.
They waited patiently for the owl to molt, which would have replaced the damaged feathers naturally, but his spring molt was not going as predicted.
That led the Wild Friends team to take a training course about a procedure they had never done before: imping, which requires using donor feathers and adhesive to replace the raptor feathers.
Luckily, they found a donation from a wildlife rescue group in Northern Utah where a great horned owl of similar size had passed away.
To prepare for surgery, Supervisor Bart Richwalski kept track of the owl’s feather patterns.
“We looked at his feathers every few weeks so we knew which ones would have to be done, snipping damaged shafts in advance.”
The imping finally took place on May 1, with Best Friends staff veterinarian Kelsey Paras joining three members of the Wild Friends team for the 90-minute procedure.
The donor feathers were laid out to replicate each wing, so the team could line up the replacement feather, cut it to the necessary length and adhere it, while the owl was under anesthesia. Ultimately, 10 primary and one second feather were replaced in the owl’s right wing, while the left wing didn’t require any replacements.
“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” Richwalski said.
The team told GNN that the new feathers will come out naturally during future molts. “He’ll lose a couple of our imp feathers each year until he replaces that entire wing.”
After the successful imping, the owl was set to be released into the wild, after silent flight had been achieved inside the Wild Friends’ large aviary. (Watch the video below…)
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Once the owl was seen flying to the highest perch, Richwalski measured the sound of its wingbeat using a decibel reader. He determined that the owl’s flight was quiet enough for safe release.
While the aviary roof slowly retracted, the owl hovered a bit before gaining speed, then flying straight up and out into the wild.
It was quite a full-circle moment for Richwalski, who had cared for the owl since picking him up in St. George.
“I don’t know that my heart was beating until I saw him leave. I was beside myself, knowing that after all this time, he was healthy and back in the wild. It was such a good feeling.”
The owl’s remarkable journey has touched every level of the organization.
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“Best Friends Animal Society believes that every animal has intrinsic value and the care that our team took with this owl really reflects that belief,” said Judah Battista, the Society’s Chief Sanctuary Officer.
“I’m so proud of the Wild Friends team for their incredibly hard work to get this owl to freedom.” (Watch their video below…)
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