WingedHearts.org

The 30 day blog challenge is over for those of us who live down under in Australia.  It's already 1 hour into the 1st July (yes I am so addicted to writing for you that I'm still up at 1.00 am.)

Thank you all so much for your interest and comments.  I really appreciate all of you who made the time to read my stories and give me your feedback.  I've had a wonderful experience sharing a little of what I have learned from these remarkable creatures with all of you.

We have so much more to learn and this can only be achieved if we share our stories and learn from examples.

I believe we all have an amazing bird story hidden in our memories. 

What is Your Bird Story?

It's time to tell all the rest of us.

What should one do when one finds a baby bird and its parents seem nowhere around?

The answer depends on many factors and is not as simple as we would like it to be.  Much depends upon the age/stage of the chick, what type of chick it is and the state of the individual bird and whether it is really orphaned or just appears so.

Here are some quick tips:

You may be a very kind and loving bird owner or you may not have birds at all.  But please help spread this message so that we can create a kinder world for these beautiful creatures. 

Pet birds are often confined to cages that are far too small for them to enjoy any reasonable quality of life. Canaries and budgies are sometimes kept in cages as small as a teapot.  Large birds like cockatoos and african greys are lucky to be kept in cages as big as the one in the picture on the left.  There is no room for the bird to even stretch their wings or get any exercise. The metal floor often a wire mesh is too harsh on their claws. The perches are also inappropriate as they are not suited to the size of their claws and the birds cannot flex their muscles.  Sitting in a cramped position for a life time of imprisonment, the birds get cranky and bite.  Then they are tagged as trouble makers and treated even worse. Large birds live for 60 -70 years in this form of confinement.  The wire mesh on the sides of the cage often damage their wings and beaks.

Yet there are some easy ways of improving their quality of life in significant ways.

The first time a bird sees a camera, he/she may feel a bit unsure of the big thing we place next to our eyes that also makes a clicking sound.  But in no time at all, they realise that the sound poses no danger to them. Once they become comfortable with the sound, they feel quite amused by our fondness for pointing this object towards them.

We use a Cannon S5 with a 1.5 teleconverter lens which is a reasonable sized equipment. To the bird it looks like we have added a big round black giant sized eye to our eye.

The birds have no idea what the camera really does for us, but that doesn't stop them from appreciating many things about it, in their classic style of observing our actions.