A dinosaur visits the Dinosaur Visitor Centre.

Just as we were packing up to leave for the weekend last Friday, lab manager Yun found this little friend in the lab’s garden. I am not sure exactly what sort of bird it is, but it what somewhat like a merlin or small peregrine falcon. It let us walk up almost right to it, which made us think it was injured in some way. At one point it flew off a little bit, so we knew its wings weren’t broken. It had been raining all day and clearly this guy had gotten pretty soaked.

Yun managed to pick it up with his lab coat and then Robin got a pair of rubber gloves for holding onto it.

We determined the cause of the problem as soon as we lifted the bird up – its left leg (the one visible in this photo) was almost completely detached at the ankle, with bone and cartilage showing. We have no idea how it managed to do this, but we felt awful because it was clearly in a lot of pain – it did not even fight being held like this.

As luck would have it, a group of science teachers was visiting the lab this afternoon, accompanied by a city official of some sort. He offered to take the bird to a wildlife vet an hour or so away from the lab, so we got the little fella packed up into a dog crate and off he went. I suppose we won’t find out what happened, but I hope he makes it ok.