The other day I went to walk out the driveway and spotted a tiny little birdy laying on the footpath.
He was hardly breathing and laying on the hot concrete in the sun, he even had a few ants crawling on him.
I called out to Lydia and picked the poor fellow up and took him inside in the shade. Baby birds are notoriously fragile and often die from the smallest things.
When we got him inside we took a small plastic syringe and fed him a little water mixed with sugar. He happily gulped it down and after that we inspected him for injuries. He had a broken toenail and what looked like an open wound on his side. We made up a shallow mixture of salt water and carefully bathed him and his wounds.
This helped to not only clean the wounds but also get off any ants that had begun eating him.
After that we left him alone for a few hours in the cool and made a few calls. We figured out it was a little friarbird, a noisy little creature of which there are many that live in the garden here.
When we went to check on him he was sitting up and chirping, opening his mouth for food and seemed to be standing on his own. We made up a mixture of crushed up cereal, egg yolk, apple juice and water into a sludgy paste and fed him that from a small plastic syringe. Approximately 2ml 6 times a day.
We ended up keeping him for a week at our house and made him a little nest in a paper bag with newspaper. We also added a stick because it's important for them to learn to stand and grip onto things. By the time he left he was doing well and had grown some more feathers.
We took him to the vet and they checked him out before handing him off to a wildlife carer. We probably would of held onto him but we couldn't get the correct formula to feed him and even though what we were feeding him was working it wasn't ideal.
We have cared for a lot of birds before but never a little friarbird. They are very noisy and can travel long distances for migration, they are known for having a bald head and most species beside this one have a small lump on their head.
They eat insects, fruit and nectar and you see them flying around the garden and bathing in the birdbaths often. We are hoping that the little one we found will recover well and one day too be hanging out back in the same garden he was hatched in.
For now goodluck little fella, you're very lucky we spotted you when we did and you fought well to survive!.