#polychromatism

Shattered

Glitchtale- @camilaart // Undertale -Toby Fox

@camilaart

Hey who wants to talk about Eastern screech owl color morphs?? These tiny murder machines are orphaned babies in rehabilitation at the center where I volunteer (WildCare Inc, Bloomington IN). They have another foster sibling too, grey morph like the cutie in the middle except smaller and darker. Anyway, this photo was taken a month or so ago and the owlets have grown up a lot since then, and they're now in an outdoor aviary learning to fly and hunt! We get a lot of Eastern screech owls here (southern Indiana). Most are the grey morph, although not as overwhelmingly as in the northern part of their range (eastern Canada). This year's batch of orphans is fascinating to look at because they all look so different that I don't need to look at their leg bands to tell them apart! Starting from the back: little red morph. Even as a tiny baby, this bird has always had reddish tones in its feathers. It's smaller than the others, which could indicate that it's male, but red morph owls tend to be smaller in general, so who (whooooo) knows. In the middle we have "great grey." Haha, not actually a great grey owl, but she's a grey morph and she weighs more than her adult foster parent! Without a DNA test I can't say for sure that she's female, but it's a fairly safe guess. This bird barely survived, actually. The tree her nest was in fell during a storm, and she and a sibling (who didn't survive) were found on the ground, soaking wet and barely responsive. When she came in, I picked her up and she didn't even move or open her eyes, and I only knew she was alive because I felt her breathing. She was probably about 10-12 days old. We got her in a cozy heated nest box and by the end of the week she was vocalizing and eating pretty well. Until she stopped. Volunteers noted on her chart that she wasn't taking food, and when I fed her I could get her to eat the tiniest pieces - which she did very enthusiastically - but anything bigger than a mouse heart she'd just hold in her beak and eventually drop. I started to worry because I know that by that age they should be able to swallow surprisingly big pieces of food, and I knew she wasn't eating overnight because her weight started to drop. She obviously wanted to eat, judging by how ravenously she ate the tiny pieces. I suspected that there might be something wrong with her mouth or throat, and bingo... we examined her and found an ulcer in her throat. Poor baby. Most likely her immune system was still compromised from her rough start and hypothermia. We hydrated her and started a course of medicine, and within a week she was eating again! By then she had a couple foster siblings, which I think helped, and we had our Eastern screech owl foster parent living with the babies too. At the babies' most recent weight check, "great grey" was the biggest of the bunch and eating very well! In the front we have a really gorgeous bird, an intermediate brown morph. Eastern screech owls aren't only red or grey! This little one actually has some really fascinating coloring on the wings, dark brown with some rusty-red coverts. I've seen light brown morphs before but this owlet is darker and mottled and really gorgeous. Their faces all look different too! It's so cool how different birds of the same species, all approximately the same age, can look so incredibly unique. 😍 All four babies are doing great and on track to be released back into the wild once they learn how to hunt prey!