Common Raven patient 22-643 arrived at ORC on July 13 after being found at a solar-thermal power facility with burnt feathers and a fractured clavicle (collar-bone), likely a result of his fall after sustaining the burns to his feathers. As you can see in the photos, almost all of this raven's flight and tail feathers have been badly singed, making it impossible for him to fly. Feather imping is a procedure that can be performed to replace a broken or damaged feather by implanting a feather from a donor bird. Unfortunately imping is not an option for our raven because all of his flight feathers are damaged down to the shaft, or base. Successful imping requires an intact feather shaft to implant the donor feather into. This patient also has so many damaged feathers, that imping would add too much weight for flight. When feathers are damaged or cut, and imping isn’t possible, birds must wait until they molt, meaning the time of year when a bird replaces old feathers with new ones naturally. Common Ravens typically molt from May through October. What this means for our raven patient is that, unfortunately, he will need to remain in our care until October of 2023, when all of his damaged feathers will be molted and replaced. The solar plant where the raven was injured uses heliostat mirrors that focus sunlight on receivers located on centralized solar towers. Sadly, great numbers of birds are killed or injured in flight, burned by the intense radiation from the mirrors. In April 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that "biologists working for the state [of California] estimated that 3,500 birds died at [this facility] in the span of a year, many of them burned alive while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit," though we must note that the number of birds killed and injured at this facility is debatable and not entirely well understood. #WildlifeRehabilitation #CommonRaven #Raven #BurnVictim #BurnVictimSurvivor #Survivor #Ojai