Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

Ah. The birdie's gone. It livened up after a good sleep. We looked at it when I got up and found it had eaten. Seed and meal worms were strewn across the box. Confined wild pigeons seem to be quite incontinent, the last one we found did the same. When we looked in the paper was covered in pigeon poop. We're not sure if it had a drink or not but we hope it did, though I suspect the bowl might have been a little high for it.

It looked much better once it was dry (remember it was raining when we found it?). It was standing up and looking quite perky although it held it's wing badly, it drooped somewhat. The droopy wing was the one with a red mark, not the one with the pale spot where we suspect Yuki plucked out some feathers.

We put up the dog gate to protect the bird overnight, in case she got curious and went looking for the strange animal in her house, and also bearing in mind that we found it because she tried to go for it.

She took Yui to the vet. I'm told that she was happy to go into the waiting room but refused to go into the surgery. The vet concluded that she has got an infection from continually biting at her paw. He gave her an antibiotic injection and gave us some antibiotic pills to give her 3 times a day for 10 days starting tomorrow.

When she took the dog in she asked if the vet would treat a wild pigeon. He said he would if she took it between 2:30 and 3:00 but he wouldn't if another case or operation came up and she said she wouldn't expect him to.

We took out the food and water and I grabbed it in the tea towel while mum changed the paper in the box. It was hard to reach and I think I pulled it's wing again but I got a good hold of it. It struggled quite a bit until I asked mum to pull the tea towel over it's head. That seemed to calm it down and I could feel it's little lungs and it's heart beating.

We put it back in the box and mum took it to the vet. She came back very quickly without the bird. I knew she wouldn't come back with it but I kind of hoped she would. She said that the vet told her the bad wing was broken.

Before she went we discussed her asking if we could take it to a wildlife sanctuary or something if he didn't want to treat it or if he wanted to put it down. Since it's a wild animal he'd be treating it for free it seems. Even though he's not a people person he seems to like animals. But he's not exactly delicate with them. He handles them with a rather Spartan professionalism. It figures that a bird that can't fly can't be set free but given the right care they can recover from something like a broken wing. Also, since it's a wild animal there's no telling what kind of germs or bugs it might have that could affect his other patients.

We didn't need to worry though. Like I said, he agreed to look at it and said he'd keep it for a few weeks. We're not sure whether he said that so as to put mum at ease and planned to put it down later or whether he was genuine about it. Either way it shouldn't suffer so that's good.

We thought the pigeon was small. I hoped it wasn't a fledgling. It's too late in the year for them. All our sparrows and starlings have been fully fledged for a while. Turns out it's a bird born and fledged this year. The poor thing . It's kind of still a baby in my eyes then, even though it's no longer in the care of it's parents. It makes sense that it would be scared and injured though. A more seasoned bird wouldn't have chosen such a place to hide where the dogs could find it.

The fact that it's a young bird should give it a fighting chance. I hope it can be released. Funny thing is, even though we only had it for a day and most of that time it was covered with a tea towel behind the door so it wouldn't be so scared, I kind of really miss it. It looked so cute when we checked on it before going to bed. It was comfortably nestled down asleep, seemingly perfectly content.

So. That's the story of the little birdie we found.

Bluebiird out.