#imping

Bev has all manner of means of converting others to servants for her Mistress.  Though she prefers doing so directly, sometimes she’ll prefer to draw the sanity, soul and essence of a victim into a jar for preservation

Ah hahaha! I am glad you, as someone who has done it, enjoyed it! I've never personally done it since my birds haven't damaged their flight feathers before and don't need to fly anyway, but I knew it was a thing and knew basically how it was done, and looked up a few guides and pictures to be sure I wasn't completely talking out of my ass when I wrote it. I was REALLY excited to write it, I know you see it as a chore but it's so cool to me. You can just!! Fix a wing!! You can just repair a feather!! You can super offend an entire bird of prey with this kind of indignity!! how dare u touch wingy

This I do not know. However, if I were to find a semi fresh bird of prey of any sort, I would call my local fish and game. We have a very great birds of prey center near where I live. I’d assume they would love to get more data on where dead BOP are found, and they can also study the body to help BOP.

Also, BOP rescues may use feathers from dead birds for something called imping, which is totally the coolest thing ever. Having proper amount/ placement of feathers is very important for birds to fly. If a bird is attacked and loses a lot of those, it can be a big problem.

With imping, it’s literally a feather transplant so they can fly and it’s so... amazing? More people need to know about it. Here’s the process-

So, long story short, if you see a dead bird of prey, you might as well call your local wildlife service. The worst answer you can get is “no, we don’t need it, leave it alone.”

Imping is a falconry term for replacing damaged flight feathers on hawks or falcons with unblemished feathers, either from a previous molt, or a donor bird.

In rehabilitating wild birds, it helps birds who have broken feathers so that they can be released sooner, rather than waiting around until they molt. Most raptors only molt once a year, so imping really comes in handy.

I'd never heard of imping until I started studying falconry, but it’s a thousand year old practice. My falconry sponsor taught me how to imp, and it's still one of the neatest things I've learned.

This red shouldered hawk came to The Avian Reconditioning Center with almost an entirely busted tail, save for two feathers. It took about an hour to put it back together with a few pins and some super glue.

The donor feathers are trimmed to match the broken feathers on the bird, and then glued in place with a tiny pin in the hollow of the shaft.

You also need someone willing to sit there for an hour and hold the bird while you do this.

If you measure well, you can make the new feathers line up almost perfectly with the birds original feather .

If you look really closely, you can see the line on the feather shaft where the new feather meets the old.

This hawk was still a juvenile, but I only had adult red shoulder donor feathers, so he ended up with kind of a mismatched tail. It works the same though. I like to think he confused some birders.