Tara

“Tara” – 4yr. female Red Tailed Hawk – telephone communication after a home visit.

As well as being a husband, father, horseman and all round animal lover, Mark is also a falconer. Tara is his beloved bird and friend – they are a unique and wonderful partnership, so it is no wonder that he is so upset when she refuses to eat and has severe digestive troubles. Nothing in her routine has changed and he does not remember her getting into anything suspicious on any one of their last hunts. The vet suspects an e-coli infection but it is unclear where she may have picked this up. 

I asked Tara if she may have an idea of where she may have gotten sick and characteristic to her matter-of-fact style, she was sassy and to the point. She showed us that the chicks she was being fed (when not hunting) still had the yolk sacs attached. She was also very clear to point out that those very yolk sacs were the culprits and source of her infection. Not being a falconer, I was not even aware that this was the type of food she was fed off-season but Mark confirmed that Tara had been getting fed (frozen) quail chicks. This would have not been unusual except that recently he had needed to find another distributor of this kind of raptor food. Tara was insistent and kept showing me the yolk-sacs. Mark did not question her and took her off of that food immediately. Upon further investigation it was found that indeed the chicks, and particularly those with yolk-sacs, were infected with e-coli bacteria. That particular breeder of the chicks was subsequently found to run a shoddy, dirty and inhumane operation and was put out of business. It took some time for Tara to recover and she needed veterinary care and antibiotics, but within a couple of months she was able to fly and hunt on her own again. From a hawks point of view, there are few things sweeter than being healthy enough to do just that.