Owls are typically birds you’re more likely to hear than to see, so it’s usually exciting when you do catch a real glimpse of one.
But that wasn’t the case the other day. Instead, it was heartbreaking.
My wife and I came upon a barred owl while walking our dog in the Farley Pond conservation area. The owl was not flying or perched in a tree. It was hopping ungainly on the ground, clearly injured and helpless.
When the owl spied us, it tried to flex its wings and made a repetitive clucking sound. It looked awkward, with a tilted head and a general unsteadiness as it tried to stand.
It was distressing and upsetting – so what to do? We didn’t have our cell phones so we walked back to the house and Googled “MA Audubon,” which provided a link to a MassWildlife list of wildlife rehabilitators. We phoned the two closest to Needham and left messages, but we really couldn’t wait for callbacks as it was getting dark outside.
We then called the Needham Police Department, and the dispatcher said he would put in a call to the Needham animal control officer. After only a matter of minutes, officer David Parsons drove into our driveway in the official animal control truck.
We apprised him of the sad situation, he pulled out a cat crate and a pair of long gloves from the back of the truck, and we all headed into the woods. We panicked momentarily because the owl wasn’t in the spot where we had last seen it, but we soon found it nearby, still unsteady and still clucking.
Parsons donned the gloves, carefully picked up the owl and put it into the crate. As we walked back to the house he said he would keep the owl overnight, hope for the best and take it to a wildlife center first thing the next morning.
As it turned out, Parsons took the owl that morning to the Tufts Wildlife Clinic in Grafton. “It opened earlier than the others,” he said, “and it’s the best.”
Tufts cared for the owl for a week, but it was on a downward spiral and ultimately was humanely put down. The diagnosis was West Nile virus, the mosquito-borne disease that can infect humans as well as up to 300 species of birds. Birds of prey such as owls and hawks, and corvids such as crows and blue jays, are particularly susceptible.
Raptors and corvids can get infected with West Nile not just by a bite from an infected mosquito but also by eating infected birds or rodents. Once transferred into a bird, the virus attacks the central nervous system and can cause inflammation of the brain and heart.
Our owl, according to Tufts, had some of the more obvious neurological symptoms of West Nile: a head tilt, a head tremor and vision problems. In fact, upon first seeing the injured owl, Parsons speculated it might be West Nile, as he had seen cases like it before.
The West Nile scourge is prolific these days, meaning that humans really should pay attention to all those warnings about avoiding mosquitoes and their bites until we get a hard frost.
As for wild birds, Tufts said it has received a lot of calls recently about birds seemingly sick with the virus. Sadly, there’s little they can do because the symptoms of exposure to West Nile tend to appear late in birds and thus too late, as in the case of our neighborhood owl.
Needham resident Nick King is a retired editor and reporter for the Boston Globe
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