new feathery friends at the ebothy

Tue, Jul 26, 2011

Every few years we do a big(ish) DIY storm repair job on the house. A couple of years ago we did the sofits, where a family of starlings had taken up residence for two years in a row. We waited until they fledged and then cleaned and sealed everything. They were so loud you couldn’t hear the telly! Anyway, this year the apexes need doing as they’re letting a lot of water in and the storms are starting to do some damage up there but we have a problem. A couple of sparrow chicks we found in the loft after the work was done. So there was nothing to do but bring them down and give them a helping hand. We put them in a plant pot next to the tree where their mum always croons but she didn’t come back. So they’re part of the family now, living in a plant pot lined with toilet paper, mucked out every few hours and hand fed with tweezers.

Because I’m not Mother Nature I can choose to be a bit more helpful so I make sure the weaker of the two gets their fair share of the grub. They’ve just opened their eyes for the first time and every time their little world darkens as my hand comes over they wake up and screech like blazes, their wee mouths agape and I drop in bits of grub from the tweezers.

Normally chicks as young as this can’t regulate their body temperature so we weren’t expecting them to last the night but we put their plant pot in the warm and cozy boiler cupboard and they were feisty wee fellas in the morning, so I think we’ve got them past the worst.

We’ve had them a couple of days now and I’m getting used to coming home from work to see how they’re doing. As if that wasn’t enough, another chick fell out of the nest at the other end of the house, into the attic, where Geoff, our DIY expert friend up from Wales to do the work found it. So we’ve got three now. The latest one is on the verge of fledging though and is always trying to get out of the pot, trampling on the younger ones, so we’ve moved him/her to their own pot. I expect the wee fella will be for the off in the morning.

It’s fantastic having them in their cozy pot in the living room if a little noisy. They settle down after a feed though before piping up a wee while later. It’s around 16 days for sparrow chicks to fledge so we’ll be having them as house guests until then. Wonder if they’ll remember us…