On a wing and a prayer
THE SMALL WOODEN door slides slowly upwards. Snow pokes out her sleek head, takes two determined and graceful hops forward, then spreads her tawny wings, flashing a brilliant white chest, and with just a few powerful beats, is away. Free.
Snow, a white-bellied sea-eagle, is one of hundreds of coastal birds of prey that have recuperated as inpatients at the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital on Queensland’s Gold Coast. From outside, the hospital’s specialist Raptor Rehabilitation Facility looks like a huge shed. Inside are seven specially constructed ‘flights’, or enclosures. Humming away in one corner is a sturdy looking fridge with a sign saying “feather library”. It holds more than 300 feathers, removed from birds of prey that have succumbed to their injuries. These are used for imping, an ancient feather-mending treatment in which a new feather is used to replace a broken or missing one on a healthy bird.
The injured birds of prey – mostly raptors such as eagles and hawks, but also owls – recover slowly and the ultimate goal is to release them back into the wild. Whenever that momentous day arrives, each bird is carefully transported in a crate by expert volunteers, back to where it was originally found. Once freed from their
