Oh, and the bird's got a name - it's Junior.
I loaned her our largest cat carrier, which carries Junior too and from work. He stays in the carrier all day, preening, cleaning himself, plucking out baby feathers as more mature feathers come in, and chirping. When the cage is opened for feeding time, Junior sometimes hops out to a finger or the edge of the cage, or just stays on his perch (a twig in the cage).
At home, my friend says Junior is allowed out, and they just follow him around with a rag and rug cleaner for when he poops. He started off trying to fly a little, getting about a foot off the ground, and it sounds like they've had him out on a tree in their yard eating berries this weekend. So it looks like Junior is going to be a success story - he's plumped up, and then tapered off what food he wants (apparently they don't eat as much as they're getting ready to start flying), and he's had a complete change in feathers (check out the red- and yellow-tips!). Before too long there will be the sad farewells as Junior decides it's time to take off and join the rest of the wild birds...
In the meantime, I'll probably keep visiting him at feeding time every few days at work. Can't wait to see how much he changes by the end of this week!
2 comments:
All this human kindness going on so close and I missed it completely. I would've volunteered to be a bird feeder, had I known.
Not too keen on the "following around, clean-up-after" chores, though. I do enough of that with my dogs!
But YAY! for Junior and kudos to M for being a true humane-itarian. Hope photos can be taken of the Into The Wild moment.
Well this all happened last fall. Junior's long flown the coop, and Mary said there was never a sign of him once he left home. I think she was kind of broken hearted over that....we hoped he'd come back and visit on occasion. Oh well - she did the right thing, and raised him very lovingly.
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