Yesterday, around lunch time, we had a very excitable phone call from the other half saying that he’d found a baby bird (we thought a sparrow, but our bird knowledge extended to ‘it’s not a pigeon or a seagull, so it must be a sparrow’) outside his work. Now, he works in the middle of town, which is no safe for a baby bird that can’t fly very well.
So, after watching it hop about on the busy pavement , Rob being the absolute animal lover he is, picked it up and put it in a little box. He then went to the nearest pet shop where he got some advice on what to do next, and some meal worm for the birdy. So, for the rest of his day in work he was bird-sitting.
On the advice of the pet shop, and a bit of Googling from me, we decided the best thing to do was bring it home and take it up to our near-by woodland and leave it in some bushes or shrubs. As it was fully feathered, it was ready to go off on its own and learn to fly.
Luckily, after a whole day of thunderous rain, it finally cleared up around tea-time. We all got our welly’s on and waited for Daddy to come home. The children were so excited to see a baby bird.
The rain had caused a stream of muddy water to come pouring down from the hill. The girls were convinced someone had spilt their cup of tea on to the road.
Off we headed up to the woods to find a safe place to set the bird free.
And, off it went….It jumped straight out of the box and hopped off into the undergrowth.
So that was our first foray into animal rescue.
Update: With the help of the very knowledgeable Knitty Mummy, I now know that this little bird was actually a baby Goldfinch.
