I came home tonight to find my oldest step-daughter Stevie and her friend Lindsay had a tiny little sparrow in one of the spare bird cages downstairs. I guess even at 20 years old, the urge to help poor defenseless animals is still strong in young women. They’d found him hopping around the driveway. He was very very young and very tiny. He seemed almost paralysed with fear, not that I blame him. The girls had given him food and water, but he seemed too small for solid food.
The girls had also figured out that they should keep this bird away from our birds, and always wash their hands after handling him. Yeah, I asked – maybe I don’t give them enough credit some times, but it’s good to know that they had figured this out already. Wild birds have diseases, but worse they have lice. My hands itch just thinking about it.
I think we might have had some of the food we used to syringe down Puny’s throat when she was little, but there’s no way in hell *I* had the time or inclination to hand feed a wild bird.
I was listening to some music near the bird, and he started singing. And I could hear other sparrows outside singing. So I decided it was time to bring the bird back outside. I did – I put the bird on the clear area below the big tree on the front yard, and stepped back. The bird started singing loudly, and other sparrows started answering. Within seconds a couple of adult sparrows landed in the branches right above it. One of them came down to check out the baby, and then flew back up. I have no idea what it was saying to our little guy, but he was making a real effort to fly up to join the adult. More flapping around, more visits from adult sparrows, and he was making little controlled flights of about a foot or two, and he was obviously being led back around the corner where the nest is.
He got into Vicki’s new garden (which she refers to as “the amoeba”), and then seemed to fall down in between these two paving stones that Vicki has put in to define the edge of the ameoba. The stones have a taper on one side, so there are all these triangular holes down in between them, and the bird seemed stuck between them. I’m not sure if it wasn’t just hiding there, but I was worried that it could get out again, so I went out and took it out of its hiding space. It quickly hid under a bush, and I went off to wash my hands again, and prepare some dinner. Stevie and Lindsay came back from wherever they’d been, and said that the bird was now hiding under the neighbour’s car. They didn’t think that was safe, so they moved the wheel barrow out there, inverted it, and put the bird under there. I’m sure if it avoids any local cats, it should fledge today or tomorrow.