Freedom for Agnes the string foot pigeon

We released Agnes this morning back at the same place we found her. Her wounds were healing nicely and it was clear she wanted to leave as she has been trying to squeeze through the bars in the dog crate we have her in. I don’t think she enjoyed our hospitality very much. She must think we’re monsters especially given how painful that first day would have been when we removed the constricting thread.

Over the next few days, I bathed her feet in warm water with a bit of salt and also sprayed Vetericyn plus on the wounds. I even found more thread embedded in the sores that I only spotted after photographing the wounds and zooming in on my computer. They were impossible to see otherwise. While they weren’t constricting threads – i.e., they weren’t wrapped tightly around as we’d already cut everything that was – they were still synthetic fibres which don’t break down and inevitably lead to chronic infection, tissue death or severe swelling down the line. Finding those tiny pieces under zoom hopefully saved her from long-term complications.

Here are before and after photos of her feet. The first was taken on Sunday when we first caught her and the second this morning.

Unfortunately when I tried to catch her in the cage this morning she nearly escaped into my office, losing two tail feathers in the scramble. I googled to see that she’d still be able to fly without them as they take 4-6 weeks to grow back and I really didn’t want to hang onto her for that long. Thankfully they can manage ok without two feathers and she flew off no problem, first landing on a nearby post before taking off beyond our sight.

I hope she’s reunited with her flock now and feeling better. It’s hard not to feel like a villain when keeping a wild bird captive. I wish she could have known I was trying to help her but wild birds don’t do gratitude, they do survival. To make myself feel better I went to visit some local pigeon friends who were more than happy to see me, provided I offered up some birdseed, which I did.

Here’s Agnes eating breakfast this morning before her release.