With a brief glance back followed by a flash of gray wings, they slipped into the shadows, vanishing into the row of dark trees.
Two Western Screech-Owls returned to the wild near the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area last Tuesday night, released after weeks spent recuperating at the California Raptor Center. One of the duo arrived in mid-July as an injured adult with eye trauma, possibly the victim of a car strike; just four days later, the other screech-owl was admitted as an ill juvenile, uncoordinated and unable to fly. Housed side-by-side in a set of small hospital cages, the two received daily medications to help them overcome their various injuries and ailments. As the owls recovered, they graduated from their small hospital cages into one of the CRC’s large outdoor flight pens, where, with no walls between them anymore, they reacclimated together to the demands of an outdoor life and the rigors of flight.
Once each owl’s flight ability was deemed adequate, it was time for the release – together, like the rest of their rehabilitation process had been. CRC staff fitted each Western Screech-Owl with a federal band (a small metal bracelet with a unique ID number), loaded the pair into a transportation box, and took them to a wooded canal running parallel to the Yolo Bypass. There, released one after the other, the two owls swooped into the same dark gap in the trees, returning to the wild with a second chance.