How Injured Birds Get New Feathers—It May Surprise You

Wildlife rehabilitators help wild raptors wing it by implanting new feathers—sometimes from other bird species.

So for this Saturday's Weird Animal Question of the Week, I'm taking the author's prerogative to ask: "How do injured birds get new feathers?"

The answer is a process called "imping"—short for implantation—in which wildlife rehabilitators implant broken feathers with new ones, enabling their patients to return to the wild. The replacement feathers eventually molt like a normal feather. (See National Geographic's pictures of beautiful feathers.)

Imping is a falconry practice that goes back about a thousand years, says Meghan Warren, rehabilitation coordinator at the nonprofit Teton Raptor Center in Wilson, Wyoming.

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