The simple genius of imping in restoring flight

The simple genius of imping in restoring flight


Early this year, a large bird of prey was rescued in Singapore after being found unable to fly due to feather loss from its wings and tail. Normally, molting and feather regrowth can take up to a year, yet the bird was flighted and released back into the wild within two weeks.

That’s because the veterinary team opted for imping, an age-old technique involving replacement of a broken feather with a carefully matched feather lost from another bird. A thin length of bamboo, fiberglass or another light-weight material is inserted into the shaft of the broken feather then the donor feather and secured with a nontoxic adhesive. It sounds simple, but flight depends on precise matching and alignment of each feather.

In this case, 50 feathers were replaced by imping, which allowed the bird to get back to the skies in short order.

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