Hello, I'm developing an enrichment guide for small animals in my shelter and your blog was very helpful with grimace scales, I was wondering if you had found any more for animals like reptiles, birds, and hedgehogs?
I'm afraid not, but I can go through the rescue folder to show some expressions of discomfort and unwellness.
We'll use Ankhou (May he rest in peace) as our baseline for a comfortable, healthy pigeon.
Like most birds, pigeon eyes are nearly frozen in their sockets.
They have neither whiskers, lips, nor external ears to grimace with.
So their expressions are mostly in the position of their heads, necks, and tails, and which groupings of feathers are raised or flattened.
This is an expression of supreme comfort.
Just a little squinty. Forehead and neck feathers fluffed up.
Everything else smooth and relaxed.
This was Passenger's arrival photo. (Some of you may have remembered her having been in the news.)
Note the curve of her neck, the low dip of her tail, sunken eyes and thin, drawn beak.
The half lidded eyes are an extreme expression of pained exhaustion.
Pigeons, even when hurt, are hypervigilant, and will be wide eyed more often than not.
She is extremely dehydrated and malnourished in this photo, barely able to stand.
Look at the difference, post recovery.
Especially at her stance (keenly alert), eyes (bright and clear), and beak (much more fleshed out).
In her case, the sunken eyes and thin beak in particular warned that she was extremely dehydrated.
Archie, on arrival, is scared and in pain, having suffered a broken wing from a vehicle strike.
Note the ruffled throat and tightly tucked head.
Same young bird, having healed.
Bridget, on arrival, had a broken wing and leg on the same side. (Also a vehicle strike.)
A little older than Archie, keenly interested in the food in front of her, and absolutely ravenous, but you still see the neck folded and head tucked.
This was when she first started putting weight on her healing foot.
She's terrified of me: note the huge pupils and ruffling of her shield feathers.
She's threatening to box me with her broken wing.
Note the almost angular ruffling of her neck feathers and how far between her shoulders her little head is tucked.
That defensive posture hurts.
Here she is, still terrified of me, but now fully healed.
Look how her head is positioned.
Yes, this is still Bridget.
She does have a neck! XD
In the loft, she's curious. Still scared of me, but I am more familiar than the flock of strange pigeons.
She's trying to figure out what perch to aim for.
Pete suffered a cat bite to the wrist of the wing facing the camera and an injury to his eyelid.
It's in a bad spot, right between the joints, and the inflammation response is so intensely painful that she can't flex her little wing.
Notice the tightly tucked head, ruffled throat, and over all hunched appearance.
Here, she is no longer in any pain; just scared.
Being in the pigeon hospital is terrifying for ferals.
It's bad enough being confined to a tiny cage, but vaccines, worming, weekly louse dips, and in this case daily antibiotics are an absolute hell of an introduction to living in human care!
Pete just has a very long skinny neck and tiny head with a fine featured face.
But, fully healed, despite the god awful molt, you can see the difference in her posture and even the wideness of her eyes.
Pierce was an extremely lucky hawk strike survivor.
It's a minor miracle that no vital organs were damaged!
But there is the extreme pain hunch in a bird whose injuries are fresh.
Note the set of the head between the shoulders, forward lean, and ruffling at the throat with feathers flattened very tightly otherwise.
This is the same bird, after all three talon holes healed.
Licorice was an interesting case!
Tied by zip tie and string to a steak in the ground for dog bait and suffering a teratoma in her breast muscle.
This is defensive posture.
She is not injured or in any pain, but she is scared, and looking for an opportunity to escape the carrier.
The teratoma (A bizarre tumor made of, in her case, random feather material in a keratin capsule) has no nerves, and her skin formed a neat little pocket around it.
Here she is after the teratoma was removed.
Not by any stretch thrilled to have me so close for pictures, but bright eyes and alert, confident I am not going to attack her.
Orion was a sad malnourished mess.
Note the lack of tail feathers, the baldness of his face, skinny toes, and shrunken beak.
Once again, head sunk down between his hunched shoulders, neck folded under it in a tight S curve that pushes the throat feathers out.
Very slight squint to eyes that would be wide with alarm were he not just exhausted from his state of starvation.
Poor little vulture child!
He's very excited for food in this photo, but since you can see his skin so well, look how much less pinched it is around the base of his beak now that he is no longer suffering severe dehydration.
Coal had the very good fortune to come in healthy and old enough to self feed.
He was just separated from his flock weeks before he'd have been able to fly.
He isn't in pain or ill.
Being dipped and wormed sucked!
So coal is NOT happy to see me a week after that last photo!
But note that his shoulders are not hunched.
While his neck is folded and his head is low, it isn't sunk down in between his shoulders.
The nape of his neck is fluffed up.
This is defensive threat posture.
He's scared, but warning me that he'll box and bite me if I get any closer.
Coal has been here a few weeks at this point.
He's not happy to see me. Dips and meds still suck.
But they don't hurt, and I get them done with pretty quick.
So he's nervous on this photo.
He's not looking forward to what ever I am about to have to do, but it's sunk in that he's not going to die or be injured.
Bug free and ready for adoption, Coal was not happy about having his pigeon business interrupted for a photo, but he's only mildly annoyed, not nervous or overtly afraid.
Now, let's look at the second most commonly rescued breed: Racing homers.
This is Grayson: Who was found crashed out hungry in 2016.
This bird failed a race.
Because they were bred to be wartime messengers, and their messages were of absolutely vital importance, the impulse to stop mid return flight to forage has been bred out of Racing Homers.
When released away from their loft, they only stop when they get home, or if it's gotten too dark to fly.
Once the food in their crop runs out (usually something extremely fatty like peanuts, for the highest possible density of fuel), their body starts digesting their muscle.
The flight muscles of a pigeon are roughly 1/4 of their overall weight.
Once they lose enough of that, they can't get off the ground anymore.
It takes about three days of non stop flight for this to happen, and a good two to four solid weeks of rebuilding condition before they can physically fly again.
Note Greyson's hunch and drooping tail, but the keen alertness in his eyes compared to the ferals.
He is not injured or sick.
He is suffering exclusively from the rapid muscle atrophy unique to racing homers who have failed a race or training toss.
This is the same bird, post recovery.
Just doesn't like being asked to pose.
Meat much more evenly surrounds his keel, and his wings no longer look to be too big for him.
Look at the way his cere has filled out compared to the previous photo.
Mark most likely got lost on a training flight.
You can tell by his poorly developed cere that this is a very young bird; not quite sexually mature.
Note the weird, flat angle of the chest and downward tilt of the head.
He trapped into a chicken coop in desperation to escape a bad storm, and unfortunately picked up worms from the chickens, and giardia likely from dirty puddle water.
This photo was taken just a little before he became severely symptomatic, while he was still able to hide being sick.
He almost died from the giardia.
He was so exhausted and dehydrated from constant diarrhea by which his body tried to expel the protozoan parasite that he didn't have energy to eat and had to be force fed several small meals a day for a few weeks until he had the strength to feed himself.
Here he is the last week of quarantine, anxious about being handled for his update photo, but no longer sick.
And here he is fully recovered and showing off his very full crop, but having the worst molt!
I hope this meander through a small percentage of my rescue folder has been enough to help you see the pattern.
It's more in the overall posture than the facial expression, as pigeons largely lack the facial muscles and features that give mammals such expressive faces.
Look for a head sunken between hunched shoulders and a drooping tail.
The more hunchy the bird, the tighter tucked head, and the further the tail droops, the more severe the discomfort.
A dramatically bobbing tail signifies a struggle breathing, the causes of which can range from anxiety to pain to physical obstruction of the air ways.
Partly lidded, sunken eyes and a shrunken beak along with a slight wobble or tremor should signify an emergency; severe dehydration.
The extremely drab, brown tinged feathers that Orion displays are a symptom of nestling malnutrition.
Most likely, his mother was malnourished when she laid the egg, and his parents could not find enough food to support the rapid growth of a baby pigeon.
Ankhou came in years later from the same area; the parking lot of a strip mall where feral pigeons are trapped and eradicated.
He's four or five weeks old in this photo, by the length of his flights, which were the only feathers he had, because his body did not get enough to grow both bones and feathers.
It took him six months to feather out fully.
And almost a year to molt into his full adult plumage.
Well, that went a little off topic. >.<
But I hope it helped.
