Pigeon saga from the past

Back in the day, 5 years ago, with previous cats and dogs who are no longer with us:


There has been an ongoing saga of the baby pigeons in the nest on the roof, which cat Felix and the neighbouring interloper have been trying to nab for a while. This morning Felix caught one and disembowelled it on the kitchen counter while I was in the shower. So that was a delightful scene. Of course it was left to me to clean it up, and I had the opportunity of seeing that its crop was filled with small grains which the parents had fed it earlier after I had fed them.

A while later, the dog was chasing something in the undergrowth, which turned out to be the other half of the pigeon pair. It must have scuttled off the roof. It is about the size of my hand and has wing feathers but is not fledged, although there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with its legs! I rescued it and put it on the ground where the pigeons feed. I threw some grain around it and in no time the parents arrived. They pecked up every seed and took absolutely no notice of their remaining offspring. So I put it in a box with seed and water and left it at the side of the house, hoping they would come and look for it.

Later, I found the box empty. Hooray! It must have flown off - there was no sign of it anywhere. For reasons of expediency, I decided not to tell He Who Can Fix Anything about the dead bird or the live bird. He would do his nut to hear that Felix had killed Hoppy and Poppy's baby. Unfortunately, when he came home and opened the garage, the baby bird was inside on the floor - don't ask me how. Into action mode - I must hard boil an egg and feed it to the bird. I ask you. Anyway, I had to admit that I had come across the bird already today, but left out the bit about the dead one and the dog chasing this one and just told him about the box and thinking it had flown away.

I retrieved the box from the dustbin where I had hidden it and went through the whole thing again - putting the bird in with food and water - and then we sat down to feed it the egg. It's amazing how sticky an egg yolk is while you try to use your fingernails to prise the beak open of a rather feisty little pigeon. Soon he was covered in bits of yellow, mushed up with water. I added a few tiny grains and those went in easily and after about 10 minutes we thought he'd had enough. Then I had to drip a few drops of water into his beak and it was time for bed. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I couldn't tell HWCFA that I knew what he'd eaten already today because I saw what came out of his dead sister, and had to pretend that I knew it could handle a few small grains!