long day

long day today.... started with leaving the apartment at 9:30, picking up a redtail hawk and a saw-whet owl from the vets and heading out to the clinic. did the normal morning stuff.. normally.. with the exception of a new patient: a very young bald eagle in very bad bad shape. starving, crawling with bugs. not looking good at all. relatively small saturday crew today with just me jess ingrid and Shayla. anyways, loaded up the trailer with 7 birds and left the clinic at 3:30 ish bound for south whidbey state park. a looong and cramped drive later (6 people and 4 mutts packed into the truck) through some pretty cool scenery especially through deception pass. we arrived at the park just barely on time (6:00pm) they had set up a sound system for us already so that was nice. did have the right hook-up for the CD player though so we had to cut out the eagle song. the show went well, just me and Ingrid handling. twas a really cool amphetheatre, just finished a couple days before according to one of the park rangers. small(ish) crowd of 80 or so. finished the show and left the park by 7:30 or 8:00. drove home. arrived at the clinic at just after 10:00. Dr. Bangert had come out to see what she could do for our new eagle but arrived to find him dead :( i was holding on to a thread of hope for him, but just a thread. disheartening to come home to a dead bird but not entirely unexpected. he was so young. according to the people who brought him in he was only out of the nest maybe a week. he still had a few patches of downy feathers.