Bugger…….

……Ringo carked it.  He was snoozing last night when we came in.  When I got up this morning, he was sort of sitting in his cage and not looking very alert.  I changed his water, then took him out to have a look at him cos he just didn’t look right.  He had loads of bits of grain round his mouth and just looked a bit dishevelled; kept opening and shutting his mouth in an unusual way.  He couldn’t seem to grip with his feet and started panting – no wing flapping or anything.  I cleaned him up and thought I better get dressed and take him to the vets.  Put him back in his cage and he just sort of fell over on his side, so I picked him up, but he just wasn’t right.  I went out of the room to wash my hands and when I came back he was lying on his side and had stopped breathing.  When I picked him up, there was no heartbeat.  I have no idea what happened to him – infections of all sorts can come on so quickly in wee birds that there’s often not much you can do about it.

Meet Ringo……

Greenfinch

…we currently have a young one of these living in a box in the kitchen.  Parsley brought him in this morning and I rescued him.  He’s now recovering from his trauma – drinking water and eating crushed seeds.  We have dubbed him Ringo, as he has a hilarious Beatles-style mop top hairdo.  And he’s got a black un-numbered ring on one leg.  We’ll keep him till he’s ready to fly off, or try to find someone with an aviary who can rehabilitate him.

 

*NEWS FLASH*

It’s not a young greenfinch! We took him to the vet, cos he was eating and rinking, but not flying, and I wanted to get what looked like a bite checked out.  He is indeed a he, and he’s a Gloster canary.  Looks a bit like this:

Gloster Canary

Ours is a bit more bottle greeny in color, and he’s very sweet.  We’ve gone and bought a wee cage, grit and seed.  I’ve made some fliers to go round the village and hopefully we’ll find his owner.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the delightful Parsley has brought about three of these wee guys in already over the last two weeks, and Caspar the Dim next door brought home a bright yellow one three days ago.  Oops.