Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

During her first walk of the day I'm told that Yuki discovered a bird and tried to eat it. A live bird. A little pigeon. When mum came home she told me about it and started looking for a box. I offered to go with her to get it, got dressed and found a suitable box. It was raining and we found the poor thing where they'd left it, huddled up in a tight little alcove under some weeds.

At once I could see that it wasn't in great condition. It had a red mark on it's wing implying a cut or a scrape and further down on the other wing a suspicious pale spot that implied it was missing a few too many wing feathers. I'm told Yui came out with a mouthful of feathers when she found it but she didn't kill it. Sometimes, while exercising a quick escape from cats a pigeon will fly up and shed a few feathers, I guess to confuse the enemy.

Mum tells me that if Yui hadn't stopped and came out with a mouth of feathers she'd never have known it was there. We figured that if Yuki could find and grab at it then another dog could and they might not have such a concerned owner.

I had to kneel down in the puddles and reach for it with a tea towel. It struggled a bit and I grabbed it awkwardly so I'm worried I might have hurt it's wing more but we shoved it into the box and all was fine. It settled down once it was inside.

When they can't fly away pigeons will hide in a tight little space and stay perfectly still so predators won't get them. Only trouble is if the space it too small they can't escape when a persistent predator comes along.

We cleaned out the old cat carrier, put the bird in and left it water and food (a combination of seed and dried meal worms). We put the box up out of the dog's reach and covered it with the tea cloth. Mostly the little pigeon seems to have been sleeping but it's been standing and moving around a bit now.

Mum's taking Yuki to the vet tomorrow because she keeps biting her paw and we're getting worried about infection and she'll try to ask if they'd treat a pigeon or not (you know because of how some people think of pigeons as vermin and need to be exterminated?) but if not I've looked for any local pigeon sanctuaries (nothing specific but there's a wildlife sanctuary that might take it).

We'll see how it goes.

Bluebiird out.