Potentially blind finch found (1 Viewer)

I have spent the last two days trying to get some advice on this and so far all I've got was that I shouldn't have done anything at all. Yeah, I don't agree with that. If no one had been around to have seen it, that would be one thing. But I can't justify sitting there and watching something struggling only for a cat to waltz up and start tearing into it. That's cruel. To sit there and watch something die is more cruel than at least trying to do something to help it survive.

This past Tuesday, my mother saw a small bird, a finch, in our yard struggling. The cat was eyeing it nearby so she went outside to try and chase the cat away to give the bird some time to fly away. But the bird didn't fly away. He tried to, but he couldn't get very high up off of the ground and every time he did, he'd fall back down again. The poor bird exhausted himself trying to fly and failing, so my mother picked him up and brought him into the house. She woke me up at about 9:00am that morning telling me that she had a hurt bird and she needed something to put him in. So I got up and went looking for something. All I could find was this small pet carrier in our attic. So we put him into the pet carrier with a towel to line the bottom with and some food (wild bird seed that we fill the bird feeders with) and water. Both of his eyes were so badly messed up that we both swore that he only had one eye and we weren't even sure that he could see out of it. We cleaned it with saline solution and started putting some eye drops in both of his eyes, just in case and we watched him to see if he was going to eat or if he might go into a state of shock. He started eating not long aftet he found the bird seed we put in the pet carrier with him. And he's been eating and drinking really well ever since. He flitters and he tries flying around the cage we got to put him in since we thought he should be in something that would allow him to see his surroundings and get some light (the pet carrier was really dark and he couldn't see out of it if he had wanted to).

We've been cleaning his eyes with the saline solution and putting the eye drops in them every day, several times a day if his eyes start to milk or cloud over or get dry and we've found out that he does have both of his eyes. The one we thought was missing was just so badly scabbed over that it looked as if it had been pecked out or something. He has two bald patches on the back of his head and he's missing a good chunk of his tail feathers but both of his eyes are looking a lot better now and he's acting like he can see, though we don't know how well.

He's not at all aggressive, he's lively, he'll sit on our hands, he acts curious some times and he's eating and drinking normally, it's almost as if we might have bought him from a pet store. We're really surprised that he is doing so well. Usually wild animals will go into a state of shock and die within 24 hours. But we've had him for four days now and he seems to be doing great. He tried to fly to his highest perch the other night and he made it and now he's been flying up to it as best he can off and on.

I took his cage and put him on the screened-in porch yesterday to get some fresh air and so he could see and hear the other birds in the yard and he actually started chirping, I mean really chirping for the first time since my mother found him. We're hoping that once his eyes are better and his feathers have all grown back that he'll be able to fly again and we'll be able to let him go back outside with the other birds in the yard. If he didn't have a will to live, he wouldn't have lived this long. He'd have probably been dead by Wednesday morning. My mother says that he looks like he might have gotten into a fight with another finch and got his rearend kicked.

If he ends up being blind in one or both eyes or his sight doesn't improve so that it's possible for him to fly again, he'll die if we put him back out into the yard. To me, to get him well again and then to do that would be cruel. We're hoping that eventually we'll be able to let him rejoin the other birds, but if we can't, how do we keep him from getting lonely? Could we go to a pet store and get another finch to put with him so he could have some company? We've had birds before and we've never been able to have more than one bird in a cage. They've ended up fighting with each other and pulling each other's feathers out. I don't want this little bird to come this far only to end up dieing anyway or to get lonely and be unhappy. He's doing so well. We can always let him fly around the house some to get some exercise (after we throw the cats outside and put the other one in another room with the door closed, of course) so he's not in a cage all the time. That's what we used to do with the parakeets and the cockatiels we used to have. But this little bird is used to having the entire area to fly around in. He's never been in captivity before. So what happens if we're not able to let him back outside? How do we keep him from becoming absolutely miserable?

Everyone on that other site was telling me that we "shouldn't have interferred". We "should have left him outside". "Nature is cruel"...yadda, yadda, yadda. I couldn't have done that, even if I had been the one to have found him. The cat would have eaten him. He'd be dead now and he's been doing really well since my mother found him. His eyes are clearing up and he's able to see. He's getting a little fiestier but he's still not aggressive and he doesn't act like he's afraid of us. Besides, people rehabilitate wild animals all the time. How is trying to help a potentially blind bird to see better any different? I think it would have been far more cruel to have left him outside, unable to see, unable to fly and pretty much completely helpless fluttering around in the grass...with a cat lurking nearby.

This is not him, he actually looks worse than this one but he's looking better than he did when he was found. This is what he's supposed to look like though:

https://academics.skidmore.edu/wikis/NorthWoods/images/8/83/Standingh.jpg

Hi BlueBird09

We have some basic guidelines for you HERE. You really do need to get advice and proper treatment from a vet.

The last thing you should be thinking of is buying a cage bird to join him (which no-one here would advocate anyway). If the eye propblem is infectious, it could be passed on. Yours is a wild bird and should, if possible, be returned there.

D

What your Finch is suffering from is called "Finch Eye Disease" and is highly contagious.

You might want to make sure all your feeders are well disinfected as they can catch it feeding from the feeders after an infected bird has fed there. More so for the tube type feeders.

D is right, it needs to be brought to a licensed rehabber to see if it can be made better. If you go on the Cornell website, they have much about this disease in the House Finches. But, that said, it was very kind of you to take this Finch in and care for it rather than it become a meal for a cat but now it's time for someone familiar with the disease to see if it can be treated properly.

Thank you both for the advice It's been helpful. I've been reading about this Finch eye disease and I'm going to send some information that I've found on it to my mother so she can read it too. She's already mentioned maybe having to take him to a vet at some point to get something to help clear his eyes up. We haven't been giving him any medication. We've just been trying to keep his eyes clean with saline solution and we've been putting eye drops in them to keep them from milking over or drying out.

What I've read about Finch Eye Disease though, the birds who have it tend to have swollen eyes. His eyes weren't swollen when she found him Tuesday morning. One of them has been for maybe the last couple of days but I noticed that the swelling had dramatically decreased yesterday. This was the eye that we thought he was missing all together. She was able to soften the scabbiness that had been covering it and used a q-tip that she had wet with the saline solution to gently remove the softened scab. After that, that one eye became a little swollen (and watery) for a couple of days. But that's all the swelling that we've seen. So I'm not sure if he actually has Finch Eye Disease or not. His other eye, when she found him, we could clearly see that it was there, it just appeared to have been really dried out.

He was really active yesterday and even trying to fly around and hover in his cage. His eyes are not "better" by a long shot, but they look 100% better than they did on Tuesday morning.

Hi again.

At it's worst state, the eyes are very swollen and the bird can no long feed or protect itself.

He's been eating very well. He often sits on the food dish, actually. I did tell my mother though when she found him (we were pretty sure that he was blind) that once he finds the food and water dishes, it's probably not a good idea to swap them. So we've kept them in the same place so he always knows where they are and can find them easily. We even gave him something that he can take a bird bath in if he wants to since he's used to doing that outside in our bird baths. But he drinks out of that one too. He doesn't seem to be having any problems eating and drinking.

If he does have this eye disease, it is possible that we found him before it really got bad. Maybe we've at least kept it from getting worse, if we haven't done anything else.

I found a bird with the same problem a few years back.took it to Tufts up in Mass.I think they had to destroy the bird because it was very contagious and no cure.it had a discharge from both eyes.as the other poster said ,you need to clean all of your bird feeders or just toss them and get new feeders.

I thought that I would give everyone an update on our little bird. He is still doing very well. His eyes are looking normal again, he's bouncing around, fluttering and even chirping. I had read about something called Tylan and how some other people had used it to treat eye infections in birds. So we ordered some and got it this past Saturday. We started putting it in his food and water that day and two days later his eyes only needed cleaning once. The day after that, we didn't need to do anything at all to his eyes and we haven't since. They both look normal now and he's even starting to act normal. He's not acting as if we might have got him at a pet store any more. He's actually starting to act more like a wild bird. He's not crazy about anyone putting their hands in the cage with him and he's starting to sling bird seed shells everywhere. My mother seems to think that he can probably fly now but she's afraid to let him out in the house (even in a small room) to test that theory because she's afraid that he may not let us catch him. He still has that bald spot on the back of his head but his tail feathers seem to be growing back.

We're planning to let him go back outside with the other birds soon, but right now we want to make sure that the eye infection is gone and won't be coming back. He acts like he's eager to get back with the other birds

Well, congratulations on the happy ending. I hope your bird continues to thrive.