baby birds

This post is really very late in coming. For those who know when the inspiration of this blog took place, they would agree with me. Its been about 2 weeks already I think, if not 3.
What happened? Well, first the story, then the lesson.

Once upon a time....our family keeps budgies. Well, really they are my dad's, but in a way they are the whole family's. (We also have a canary that we found on our front lawn and caught and now keep.) We have approximately 15 at the moment. All differing ages, some older, some younger, some chicks. There are blue, purple yellow green and white. The yellow female and her mate were raising a new lot of chicks, 3 as it turns out. Then, suddenly, one afternoon, when my dad WASN'T home, my mum tells me to come and take a look outside. There, on the ground of the aviary lies a chick. Maybe a week old, bare, and yeah, well, pretty ugly, but oh so cute! (Sadly, no picture) This poor chick was alive and we would have figured that it had been kicked out by its mother. This wasn't the case, however, because immediately we saw the mother, tucked away in a corner, dead. NOT GOOD! What about the other chicks then? Quickly, have a look. First, find the right nest box and then peek inside. It was a bit hard to peek, considering it was the highest one! Stick my hand in and come out with 2 dead, bloody chicks. Sad. How do you save a chick that is a week old, max, has a wound on its wing, and has no mother? Tell you in a sec, first the culprit.
How the mother bird died, we do not know. No injuries whatsoever to be seen. Maybe it was sick. Not so with the chicks. Birds are not always cute and cuddly. No sir. Another female decided that this was her chance. She got in there and killed two of the birds and managed to kick the last one out. I don't know what the father did, but it didn't help. We put her in solitary confinement :) Now she has a companion of another troublemaker, but they aren't very good friends.
Back to the chick. Because my dad wasn't home my mum and I had to decide what to do. We couldn't call dad for help either (different story). Oh dear. We decided that if we left it it would die, and if we tried to do something it could still die, but hey, then at least it had a chance.
Try #1: Put it in a cage with the father and let him take care of it. That was a good idea, wasn't it? It is if the father cares! He spent the whole time trying to look for a way out! No concern for the baby. I mean, hey, what about parental instincts?! Not for that bird.
Try #2: We had to keep him warm so we took it inside, in a cloth in a cage. Not that the cage mattered, because it couldn't fly anyway. So, he had warmth, but what do you feed it? That is not so simple! Google, great machine, but not as helpful as I would've liked. Off to the pet shop, pick up some 'formula'. Mix a tiny bit with some water and try to feed it. That is one BIG mission. Eventually, over the course of the evening I managed to get some food and water into it. It was fairly spirited and kicked out a bit.
I don't know if any of you have gone to such a mission, to care for something small and tiny, but it does something to you. Maybe the father didn't have parental instincts, but I sure did have the instinct to care and to put my heart into caring for this small bare bird. We figured that if it would survive the night then it had a good chance of living into adulthood. I planned to get up at 5 the next morning to feed it, after seeing if it was still breathing. A situation like that however, does NOT allow you enough peace of mind to sleep. I was up at 2, wide awake and had to go check. It was alive! It was cheeping too,and its eyes were starting to open! I can hear some of you say, aaawww, how cool! It was! It made me so happy. 2 am is not really classified as surviving a night though! Back to bed after giving it some food and up again at 530. Some more food for a living birdie. To cut the rest of the story short, my hopes were rising by the hour, and so were the rest of my pessimistic family's. That is, till that afternoon. I took it out at 3 in the afternoon to feed it. A couple of minutes later, that not so very chirpy bird died in my hand. Yep, dead. Well, I tidied everything up. The food, the water, the teaspoons and syringes. The container and the soft cloths. Then, (sorry, this will sound terrible) I threw it in the compost bin. Mum says, have you told the others? Here I am, trying not to be too sad, because I knew that there was high chance of this happening, and I have to tell my 16 and 6 year old siblings? Well, I did it, put on a brave face. They took it well. They were ready for it.
That is the story. Long huh? Sad too aye. It showed me some things though but they come in the next post...