Great horned owl takes off after successful rehab

A rehabilitated great horned owl took to the Calgary skies once again after spending some time in the care of a conservation group.

"He came to the hospital because he had a fractured wing, specifically the humerus, one of the bones of the wing," Dr. Nicole Rose of the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation told CBC News Friday night.

He doesn't have a name, rather, the institute refers to him as patient #17-1000. That's code for the 1,000th patient the institute has helped in 2017.

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Rose says the owl's injury made recovery fairly straight forward.

"Overall he was in pretty good condition, a lot of these are acute traumas which bodes well for them, they tend to do better. We feed them well when they are in their care and cover them with pain medication so he did make a full recovery," the staff veterinarian explained.

While she can't say definitively what caused the Bubo virginianus' injury, it was likely a collision with a car.

"When he came in he had a bit of head trauma so he was a bit quieter, but after a few days you could see that personality come out," Rose said with a laugh.

"They like to hiss at you, they like to rip at their towels, pull down their covers and stuff like that, so he definitely gave us the attitude that we want to see in them. That means we know they are feeling good."

She says the non-for-profit institute relies mostly on donations and external funding for operational costs.

"Procedures like this are quite costly. People that may have surgical instruments, anesthetic-monitoring devices that they could donate, any donations and definitely accepted," Rose said.

"We are looking for clipboards right now for our patient hospital sheets."

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