It's a boy, no it's a girl!!!

For those of you who know I'm expecting my first (human!) baby in a few weeks, you might think today's blog title is referring to my own little hatchling. Well, it ain't so! That little tidbit of information, boy or girl, won't be known until the wee one literally makes its appearance! Today's title is in reference to some of our educational birds whom we recently had sexed.

A few years ago we sent a blood sample of our osprey out to the lab for sexing. When Oliver first joined our non-releasable educational bird staff in 2002 I hadn't seen an osprey for many months. My first thought was that it was a female. Female raptors are larger than male raptors. For a lot of bird species it happens to be the opposite, for example female pelicans are smaller than male pelicans and female cormorants are smaller than male cormorants. It just so happens, in the world of birds-of-prey, the female is bigger and sometimes by quite a lot. That being said, as I mentioned, I hadn't seen an osprey in a while and "thought" the this newly acquired bird seemed, to me, to be rather on the large side. Therefore, I named the osprey Olivia!

After we'd had "Olivia" for a few weeks we took in another injured osprey. And guess what? It was much larger than "Olivia", hence I reconsidered my decision that Olivia was Olivia and renamed it Oliver! By the way, I'm a fan of olives, that's how come I chose Olivia/Oliver for the osprey's name. In fact, I had always thought I might name my own child Oliver if it was a boy, but after having an osprey named Oliver for over 8 years I now feel like the kid would someday ask, "Why did you name me after a bird?" Needless to say Oliver was scratched off my "Baby names list" a few months ago! Ok, so Oliver it is for the osprey. But, am I really sure it's a boy?

In the world of bird species where the sexes are different sizes there is always that "gray area". For example, if you're not good at simply looking at the overall size of a brown pelican and tossing out your guess for male or female you can always make a guess based on bill length. Plenty of studies (and of course I don't have any references handy to footnote here!) suggest that if the bill length is 10 to 11 inches, the brown pelican is a female. If the bill length is 11 to 12 inches, the brown pelican is a male. Well, that means that a brown pelican whose bill is 11 inches could be a male OR a female, right?! But, in the world of osprey it is "commonly noted" (again, sorry, not references to footnote!) that female ospreys behold a "necklace" of brown feathers across their upper chest. In other words females have a narrow band of brown feathers from one shoulder to the other across what is otherwise a solid white chest of feathers. But...this isn't carved in stone! And in fact, Oliver, our smaller (?) osprey has what I'd describe as a sketchy necklace of brown feathers across his supposed (according to overall size) male chest! Good grief! Is he a he or not???

Not that it really matters, as the bird isn't going to interrupt an educational program to say something like "Hey, would you stop calling me Oliver...I'm a female for goodness sake!" But...sometimes we just want to know! So, a few years ago Oliver broke a blood feather. This is a new feather growing in that still has a blood supply to it. With this broken blood feather came a bit of a bloody mess. We quickly took Oliver off display and into the hospital. The part of the feather that was still in his wing, wicking out his blood supply, was quickly pulled to halt the leakage. And since we had an optimal blood sample, we dab a dot onto a nice white index card. A second card was pressed over the blood drop on the first card. This not only flattened the blood spot, but provided us with a back up sample...should the US mail or lab lose the sample we sent. No worse for wear, Oliver was then returned to his habitat and the blood sample was sent off to a well known lab (for sexing zoo animals) along with some basic data such as what species of bird the sample was from and an identification name or number and a check for $20.00. I believe this was in 2005 or 2006.

A few weeks later we received a letter from the lab. Sex for osprey [identification Oliver] indeterminable. What? After we had patiently waited to know once and for all the lab was claiming "we can't tell"? I called the lab and spoke with a representative who told me that they simply didn't have male/female references on file for osprey. I told her that if I got one in that died that I would necropsy it and send her a "proven" blood sample for comparison. She agreed to the plan. And surprisingly, a week or so later, a beautiful osprey (with a distinctive "brown necklace") arrived after being struck by a car. Unfortunately, the bird died within an hour from internal injuries. Right away I suspected this osprey was female because (a) it was really large and (b) it had a very obvious necklace across its chest. A necropsy (think autopsy for animals) proved that to be true. I took a blood sample, in the same fashion as I had from Oliver, and sent it off to the lab. Only to be disappointed again when a few weeks later the lab sent a second letter to say they simply didn't have the right testing materials (I can't remember exactly what they called it) to compare this positive female's blood sample with Oliver's sample that they had kept on file. Ugh!

So, for the next four or five years we continued to call our osprey Oliver and assume he was a male with a slight brown necklace. That brings us to the present. A few weeks ago I posted on a wildlife rehabilitation Q&A site, that I'm a member of, inquiring of other fellow rehabbers to suggest a different lab that they have used for DNA sexing of some of their educational birds. The response was very much in favor of a lab I had never heard of. I contacted the lab by email and asked if they had had success determining the sex of several different wild bird species. We had a turkey vulture that we'd named Daisy, never sure if this bird was actually a female, and a relatively new member to our collection, a burrowing owl, we call TJ. All of this was spurred by a broken blood feather from my own personal pet cockatiel, KC, whom I have always assumed is a boy. This assumption was based not only on his ability to talk -- they say female cockatiels don't chatter as much, but that's already been proven not to be a sure thing as I know some female cockatiels that do -- but the fact they my little KC likes to get busy pleasuring himself on a perch in front of a mirror almost every morning! The lab responded with an email that said yes, they've tested numerous osprey, vultures and burrowing owls. So volunteers and I got busy and collected blood samples from Daisy, TJ and, poor thing, Oliver! And with a check to cover the $19.50 fee for each sample, off it all went in the US mail last week.

Today, I received an email with the subject line "DNA Test Results". I was surprised at how quickly the lab had produced the results and opened up the email with much anticipation! And low and behold! My dear KC (cockatiel) is definitely a MALE. Daisy, the turkey vulture, is in fact a FEMALE and Oliver, the osprey, is indeed...a MALE!!! The big surprise was TJ. For some reason I had always thought TJ was a male. But, no, TJ is in fact...a FEMALE! So there we have it! Definite answers to a rather irrelevant question. I say irrelevant because, in fact, it doesn't really matter to anyone but those of us who "feel" that the birds are male or female, something we simply wanted to verify so we wouldn't feel guilty giving a boy bird a girl's name or a girl bird a boy's name! TJ, for the record, stands for Tomato Jelly...a name bestowed upon the owl because it came in a week after a good friend to the bird center passed away...and what I remember the most fondly about this gentleman was that the evening he invited me over to his house (he was in his late 80's at the time) he was eagerly awaiting my opinion of a special treat he'd made me...tomato jelly (aka aspic)...yuck!