I received a phone call from the local school that one of the kids had found an injured bird, and please could I come and take it off their hands. I wasn’t able to go straight away, as I had an appointment, but I arranged to go as soon as it was over. I went as soon as I could and found the poor bird upside down in the box. The lady at the school was quite upset about it, and the little boy that had found it kept coming in and asking had I come yet, so she was very pleased when I turned up, even though I told her that things didn’t look good for the bird. I took the bird home and made him a nest in the box so I could keep him upright, and left him alone to see how he fared. Obviously there were head injuries, which he could recover from him, but one wing was drooping, and if the wing was broken the chance of recovery wasn’t great. I checked him before bed, and he was standing up in the box unassisted, so that was good, but decided I’d take him to the vet in the morning.
In the meantime, I wanted to work out what sort of bird he was. I thought initially he was a young bower bird but he wasn’t as big as other bower birds I had had in care, and he didn’t have the piercing blue eyes. I got in touch with Julie and the pair of us checked various sources, including the net, and quite some time later decided it was a female juvenile bower bird. No other bird was anything like it…..
Into the vet I went the next morning, and there discovered that she was about to ring me, she had an injured bird she needed help with. We had a quick look at her bird, a white cockatoo, and there was no doubt the poor bird would be going to heaven. Without going into detail, he had horrific injuries, and we didn’t want to touch him and hurt him more. So Sandra prepared the injection for him, and dripped a bit of it into his beak, so he would be sedated and it wouldn’t hurt him so much being handled. While that was taking effect, we went to work on the bower bird. We took him out of the box, and while inspecting her, we realised her wing was indeed broken, so we sent her to heaven. Then we went back to the cockatoo, and were able to handle him without moving him too much, and sent him to heaven.
We were just packing up and Sandra got a phone call from Cheryl, the pathology nurse, asking could we look at a rosella she had found on the way to work this morning. So I went up to the hospital where she worked, and they handed over the cat basket containing the bird, and back I drove to the vets. Both Sandra and I hate birds in cat baskets that don’t open from the top, and this was a cat basket that didn’t open from the top. Fortunately Sandra knows how to dismantle cat baskets….trying to get injured birds out of this sort of cat basket when they’re not in the mood to co-operate can be really interesting…… So she dismantled the cat basket, and we found a rather feisty little rosella, but unfortunately it too had a broken wing, and had to go to heaven.
We both felt like Dr Death after all that, and we both hoped for no more calls for a few days. A few days later, Sandra called me again. A kookaburra had got tangled up in a fence, and the lady that found it was bringing it in that afternoon. Sandra said she would ring me when it was arrived, and we both hoped the weather would co-operate, as it was turning nasty. The phone call came, and I drove in, and we examined the bird. It seemed pretty well off with the pixies, but after careful examination we found no broken bones, and no sign of ligament damage (it was hanging by its foot). We decided I would take it home, and see what happened. We both expected it to die overnight, but were very eager to give it a chance. If it appeared worse in the morning, I would bring it back for further assessment, otherwise if it was improving, I would start force feeding it.
Next morning I checked it, and it was sitting quite normally in the box. So I gave it some of Gypsy’s lean meat, and fed it every few hours during the day. The next day, Saturday was pouring with rain, and I went in to feed it. I opened the box, and it flew round the room! Well I thought, you can go! However, it was raining so heavily there was no way I was releasing anything! So back in the box it went, and the feeding continued that day. After church on Sunday I set out on the road to where the bird lived (in the church yard at Ilford, one of the villages near here), and discovered the road had been cut by flood water. The other road I could have used was also cut by flood water! Monday came and I found one road was open, so out we went to Ilford, normally a 20 minute drive, but because I had to go the long way it took me 40 minutes. The release went very successfully, with her flying into a nearby tree initially, then flying across the paddock.
At last! Success!…:)
Mamaroo's Diary 