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hello, and I need help with a very young bird caught by a friend's cat (1 Viewer)

hello, and thanks for the help for a very young bird caught by a friend's cat

I was at a party at my friend's house and his cat brought in a baby bird - we chased the cat away and after a while the bird started moving again, and it appeared to be uninjured. I took the bird home in a cardboard boxed filled with torn newspaper, and warmed it with a desk lamp. The bird (I'll call it Donnie Dodo because that's the first type of bird I could think of when I got my first good look at it) crawled about a bit and made itself comfortable under a scrap of newspaper.

I fed Donnie a little bread dipped in rainwater, and some water, using the tube of a cotton bud as a dripper. Then later I dipped a small bit of bread in a tiny amount of honey and Donnie eagerly sucked the honey from the bread. I gave more water at hourly intervals.

Currently the little fellow is keeping warm in my shirt pocket, emitting a little whistle now and then, I'm going to feed Donnie some more bread and honey after I post this.

I don't know what species Donnie is, can someone help identify? I'm a complete bird newbie, I took Donnie from the party because no one else gave a damn.

I'm going to try to attach some photos I took, but I've never used a forum like this one before so it might not work.

Donnie is has very fine yellow feathers, with dark grey/pink skin underneath. The eyes are still closed shut. The beak is dark apart from the very tip which is yellow. The bottom half of the beak is a little wider than the top half, especially at about a third of the way from the tip. The beak has two patches which open for breathing, when I gave Donnie some water he blew a couple of bubbles through them (I guess I gave too much at once from my little hard-to-control dropper tube).

The legs have no feathers towards the bottom, and the feet have three toes at the front and one at the back, they seem to be able to grip something about the thickness of a pencil. The tip of the toes have little pale spikes on, like the beginnings of claws.

Donnie has little stubby wings about 1.5cm long.

There is a wetland area about half a mile away, I don't know if a cat would go that far to catch a bird and then bring it all the way back relatively unharmed.

The surroundings are suburban gardens in South East London, UK - trees, bushes, flowers.


So, does anyone know what it is? And how can I best care for Donnie from now 7am until 1:30pm which is when the nearest animal rescue center opens its phone lines? Should I take Donnie to a vet before then? S/he whistlechirps every so often, and quite vigorous at moving about although s/he stretches one leg more than the other so maybe one of them is hurt.
 

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Hi, CM,

A warm welcome to you from all of us on staff at BirdForum!

Your little chick looks like a duckling to me (based on the bill), but I'm sure someone will come along shortly who will have a better idea.

I would certainly encourage you to take this chick to the nearest vet or bird rehabilitation/animal rescue center as soon as possible. Whatever species it is, it's extremely young and will need some non-stop care if it's to survive.

I think you've done a great job so far. Please let us know how you're doing with Donnie, okay?
 
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Hi ClaudiusMaximus,

A warm welcome to BirdForum.

Can't add much to what Katy has already said - you could try ringing the RSPCA. Other than that keep doing what you're doing and let us know how things turn out.
 
Donnie is doing well - in that s/he hasn't keeled over yet. I'm having trouble keeping him/her warm, the desk lamp is too hot and my pocket is too cold, so I'm warming him/her up in my hand at the moment. Donnie seems to want to sleep for now, he did wake up a while ago and chirped softly so I powdered up some stale-ish bread and mixed it with water, let it soak for a bit, and then using a pipette that I finally managed to get hold of I managed to get some down Donnie's throat.

I took a pic of Donnie's feet - they don't look like a duck's feet to me, but I know very little about birds, I've just been thrown in at the deep end with a baby bird to look after.

Thanks for the welcomes, what a friendly bunch you are :)
 

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Thats a squab... baby pigeon. They are fed " pigeon milk" by their parents. We could do with one of our pigeon fancier types to come and tell you how to feed them... hang on!
 
I just got a call from the nearest animal rescue/sanctuary (I emailed them earlier, but they had a power cut this morning so they must have just got back on power), and they said I should bring Donnie the baby pigeon down to them as soon as possible. His current condition seems to be good, he's wriggling about from time to time in my pocket.

Thanks all for your help, I'll report back when I get back from the rescue centre.
 
S/He's in the care of the animal sanctuary now, they said the first few days are the toughest but if s/he survives those then there's a good chance of making it to adulthood. The lady I met there made a nice nest for Donnie and got a heat lamp, and she said they had a bird specialist, so here's hoping for a bright future for him/her. The lady also said that she would send some pictures if Donnie survives, I'll post them here along with the news updates I get from her (assuming she gives permission of course).

Thank you all for your kind support :)
 
It's wonderful how everyone responded to CM's request for help and gave such good practical advice. I'm impressed. It's good there's a place to seek this kind of help. Well done all of you.

Hope everything turns out well.

Sandra
 
ClaudiusMaximus said:
I got an email from the animal sanctuary - sadly Donnie the baby pigeon died in the early hours of this morning.
I'm so sorry to hear that, CM, especially since you did everything you possibly could to help. A bird rehabber once told me that even though there are no obvious external injuries, birds -- and chicks are especially vulnerable -- that have fallen out of trees or have been captured by cats frequently suffer internal injuries from which they usually don't recover.

Thank you so much for all you did!
 
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