Flying lessons

We're looking after three little tawny frogmouths at the moment. There the cutest little buggers you can find, but being meat eaters they tend to be a bit messy and smelly, so the cage has to be cleaned out daily.

With most birds that's just a case of pulling the base out of the cage and changing the newspaper, but with these guys they like to sit on the bottom of the cage, even though they have a couple of perches in there.

What I have to do is take them all out one by one and put them in a bowl and clean the cage while they watch me.



These little guys are getting to fledgling age now so, as you can imagine, they're not content to just sit in the "nest" and watch anymore.

They like to explore.



That's Larry still in the bowl. He's the heaviest of the three, but he'd been attacked before he came into care and has a few feathers missing. As a result, he's not as confident about trying to fly as the other two. Moe is sitting on the bike closest to their cage and Curly is the one on the left.

Curly is the most confident and competent flier at the moment. Shortly after this picture was taken Moe tried to fly to the cage. He made it, but landed a little too low down to get in the door and I had to pick him up and put him in. Curly hopped over to the other bike, flew to the cage, landed in the right spot, but fell into the cage. I had to carry Larry.

That was Wednesday. Yesterday (Thursday), Curly ended up on the handlebars, with the other two on the front wheels. Larry's getting more confident, but I still ended up carrying him the rest of the way. Moe made another attempt at the cage, but missed again. Curly was the star of the show.

You can't see it in those pictures, but there's another cage on the floor to the left of the bikes with a basket on top. I was standing in the doorway watching and Curly decided to fly toward me and landed on the basket. When I moved he flew back to the bikes, then he decided to attempt the bench behind the cage. You can just see a stick on there, it's a perch I'd removed from the cage to give them more room and I think that's what he was aiming for.

He almost made it.

I don't have any kids of my own, just two grown up stepdaughters, but I've now got an appreciation of what it's like to see your kids walk for the first time.

Gapeworm

A bit of a sad post today, but it's something quite common so I thought I'd write about it for those readers that might be new to caring.

The young magpie in the picture below came into our care on Wednesday afternoon. He'd been sitting on the ground in someones front yard for three days and we got a call to go and pick him up. He seemed lively enough when Donna got him home but wouldn't eat.



Magpies, crows, ravens, butcherbirds and peewees all belong to the same family, family corvidae, as such they tend to all eat the same kinds of food, usually insects and grubs. This causes a problem, especially in the younger birds, because a lot of grubs and worms are the intermediate host for gapeworm, a nasty parasite that is usually fatal if not treated.

We get a lot of young crows and magpies in care at this time of year and we've got into the habit of automatically checking and treating for gapeworm. The poor little fellar in the picture above was too far gone when we got him and he died the next day. He had the worst case of it I've seen so far. If you look below his tongue, near the base of the beak, you can see what looks like vermicelli, that's the gapeworm.

It basically kills the bird by filling up their throat until they can't swallow food anymore and they starve to death. As young birds need lots of food while they're growing they won't last long if they can't eat. They might even still look in good condition just before they die. It's easy to treat if you get to it in time, but that often doesn't happen because the bird is already past it by the time someone notices something wrong and calls a carer, or takes it to a vet.

So if you're reading this because there's a young bird (of the feathered variety) that's been on the ground in your yard for a couple of days and you're concerned about it, get it to a vet as quick as possible. It may not be too late.