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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Super's Status


Yesterday afternoon, I was able to visit Super, the Northern Flicker pictured atop this Blogger entry. He can be seen here in the cage where he needs to be kept during his recovery time for the healing of his broken wing and a concussion. These are the injuries he was diagnosed as having upon his being evaluated at the bird rehab center. It was my second time visiting Super since his being admitted to the wild bird rehabilitation center in New York City last Tuesday, April 5th. This photo may look familiar to you, dear reader, for I included one very similar to it it in an entry here on Blogger this past week, when I wrote about the diagnosis of this injured bird. In the aforementioned entry, I referred to another Blogger post where I introduced Super and described how a building superintendent and I were able to participate in rescuing him, and how we came to the idea of giving the name Super to this Northern Flicker.


I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of Super's rescue, and I confess that it has been hard to get the frightened expression that he had on his face out of my mind. Therefore I was truly grateful that the facility which is treating Super let me visit him yesterday. They are a busy organization and I don't want to stand in the way of the work they are doing.In any event, the "hospital chart" that is posted on Super's cage — as of yesterday — looks like this:



It reads slightly different than the one that was adhered to his cage last Thursday which looked like this:



If you compare the charts, you will see that suet has now been included in Super's diet, but blueberries have been removed. The removing of blueberries from his diet is indicate with the notation nope :( which has been written over the word blueberries.

I was curious about why the symbol :( was included with the notation regarding the removal of blueberries from Super's diet. Did the symbol mean it was a bad sign that Super could not have blueberries? Or did it mean that it was wrong that someone at the facility had given Super blueberries? Nobody at the facility seemed to know the answer to blueberries being removed from Super's diet, but hopefully when I visit Super on Thursday, I'll have some clarification.

Meanwhile, Super remains cage-bound and it seems he still will be for a few weeks. His wing is still bandaged and after it is completely healed they will take him into their flight room where he will have to prove he is ready to be set free in Central Park and continue on his journey to wherever he was migrating before he had his accident.

Additionally the facility has not had access to an Xray machine to determine the status of Super's head injury. According to the founder of the bird rehab center, an Xray is not necessary to determine treatment, but as a pre-caution, they'd like to Xray Super and hope to do so as soon as a machine becomes available.

It must be such a stressful time for Super as he recuperates in unfamiliar surroundings. I truly hope he gets the rest as well as the strength he needs to continue on with his life.

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