ANOTHER new pet (for a time)
So yesterday morning, I get a message from my husband, "Call me back as soon as you get this message." I'm wondering what has happened. Has his mother had a stroke? What? He sounded very frantic.
I call him back, prepared for the worst, and he says, "I looked outside a few minutes ago, and I saw all these lorikeets gathered in one spot in the street, so I went over to have a look. There was a lorikeet lying on its back, and it looked dead or at least unconscious."
A lorikeet in our front yard, circa 2003
Well, it's typical in our part of the world, to find a lorikeet knocked out by the side of the road. They are solid, muscular little birds, with teeny wings, and so they aren't very good flyers.
They routinely get hit by cars... as obviously this little guy had.
I think the hullaballoo with all the other birds surrounding it was probably the other birds trying to wake it up to get it out of the street before it got run over. These lorikeets see their friends get hit by cars all the time, and they're pretty clever.
So anyway, Pete ran to the garage and got a box, picked the little guy up in a towel, and took him inside. He was calling me because he wanted to know what he should do next. (I used to volunteer at a wildlife rescue organisation here, so I have some knowledge and training of such things).
Since 90% of these guys' injuries relate to concussion from being hit by a car, it was a logical assumption, and so I told him to put a towel in the bottom of the box (he had already put a bowl of nectar in, which is what these guys eat in captivity), and cover it with another towel, and just leave him in a warm place to rest all day.
When I got home, we transferred the little guy to a rather large, multi-storey bird-cage style rat cage that we have used in the past for such recoveries. I went out and cut off a few eucalypt and grevillea branches and "decorated" his new home, and got out a few bowls to fill with nectar, fruit and water, and we put him in the cage.
He went straight for the nectar.... hunger is always a good sign.
This morning he seems fine and is perching OK, although he's a bit quiet.
We'll keep him until at least the weekend, but probably another week after that, to ensure he's fully healed before we send him back out with his friends.
If you release them back to the wild too early, they can still tend to be a bit concussed, and sometimes even though they look better, as soon as they try to fly, they can't manage it for more than a few metres.
So two weeks is about standard to keep him, just in case.
We'll start setting his cage outside in the early mornings, probably on the weekend, so his friends can come visit and encourage him.
The last time this happened, we took the bird, who was from our local flock, outside in the cage, and all the other flock members came and sat on the cage and talked to him (did I mention these little guys are not the least bit afraid of humans?)
Hopefully the result with this guy will be the same, and when he's all recovered, we'll open the cage door, and he'll fly off into the wild with his friends again!
There was one bird for many seasons which used to come and eat on our windowsill, and would even let us pet him... I always suspected that was the last little concussed guy we nursed back to health, so maybe we'll have made another close friend!
It does my heart good to help out a poor little concussed bird.
I call him back, prepared for the worst, and he says, "I looked outside a few minutes ago, and I saw all these lorikeets gathered in one spot in the street, so I went over to have a look. There was a lorikeet lying on its back, and it looked dead or at least unconscious."
A lorikeet in our front yard, circa 2003
Well, it's typical in our part of the world, to find a lorikeet knocked out by the side of the road. They are solid, muscular little birds, with teeny wings, and so they aren't very good flyers.
They routinely get hit by cars... as obviously this little guy had.
I think the hullaballoo with all the other birds surrounding it was probably the other birds trying to wake it up to get it out of the street before it got run over. These lorikeets see their friends get hit by cars all the time, and they're pretty clever.
So anyway, Pete ran to the garage and got a box, picked the little guy up in a towel, and took him inside. He was calling me because he wanted to know what he should do next. (I used to volunteer at a wildlife rescue organisation here, so I have some knowledge and training of such things).
Since 90% of these guys' injuries relate to concussion from being hit by a car, it was a logical assumption, and so I told him to put a towel in the bottom of the box (he had already put a bowl of nectar in, which is what these guys eat in captivity), and cover it with another towel, and just leave him in a warm place to rest all day.
When I got home, we transferred the little guy to a rather large, multi-storey bird-cage style rat cage that we have used in the past for such recoveries. I went out and cut off a few eucalypt and grevillea branches and "decorated" his new home, and got out a few bowls to fill with nectar, fruit and water, and we put him in the cage.
He went straight for the nectar.... hunger is always a good sign.
This morning he seems fine and is perching OK, although he's a bit quiet.
We'll keep him until at least the weekend, but probably another week after that, to ensure he's fully healed before we send him back out with his friends.
If you release them back to the wild too early, they can still tend to be a bit concussed, and sometimes even though they look better, as soon as they try to fly, they can't manage it for more than a few metres.
So two weeks is about standard to keep him, just in case.
We'll start setting his cage outside in the early mornings, probably on the weekend, so his friends can come visit and encourage him.
The last time this happened, we took the bird, who was from our local flock, outside in the cage, and all the other flock members came and sat on the cage and talked to him (did I mention these little guys are not the least bit afraid of humans?)
Hopefully the result with this guy will be the same, and when he's all recovered, we'll open the cage door, and he'll fly off into the wild with his friends again!
There was one bird for many seasons which used to come and eat on our windowsill, and would even let us pet him... I always suspected that was the last little concussed guy we nursed back to health, so maybe we'll have made another close friend!
It does my heart good to help out a poor little concussed bird.