Sunday 25 October 2009

I came in after mucking out this morning and found a blue tit stuck to the fly paper in the kitchen. It had one wing totally stuck and was going mad. We managed to peel it off and tried to remove the sticky, first with surgical spirit (no good) and then with white spirit, which was working but the poor little thing was dying, whether from stress or fumes we don't know. It keeled over and I left it in the sun outside. All the years we've used fly papers, never had such a thing happen before. Maybe because it's late in the year it came in and saw a few flies handy...

Anyway, an hour later, Kayleigh came to tell me it was still alive! So we gave it some extra warmth with a hot water bottle under some towels and kept an eye on it. Another hour and it was on its feet! We gave it yet another hour to regain strength, and then carefully washed its wings with washing up liquid to remove the oil, which we could still smell. It has lost a few tail feathers. So, at the moment, it is resting in the laundry basket by the Rayburn, and has my mesh food cover over to prevent escape.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A useful tip I was given for rescue birds - ANY bird can be fed on hard boiled egg in a crisis, regardless of it's normal diet. But it's really difficult once things start to go wrong. Well done for trying. (*J*)