Early in January this year, on a warm Sunday morning, I was walking by our garden when I spotted my dog curiously sniffing at something. My dog, sweet as she is, isn't very "creature friendly" and loves chasing and terrorrising cats, so naturally I rushed to her, expecting to find a poor scared kitty.
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| With her favourite teddy |
But a very different sight met my eyes. Huddled in a corner under a coconut tree was a teeny-tiny baby pigeon! I was surprised, to say the least, to find it there. Although we have numerous pigeons nesting on various window ledges of our house, this was the first time I found a live baby on the ground. The fact that it was very far away from the nearest nest was another surprise. It had a clearly visible wound on its little head, which led me to guess it must have been probably carried away from the nest by an eagle or crow, which might have dropped it by mistake. I am no bird expert, but I would say it must have been within a month old.
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| The nonstop wing flapping |
I have never hand raised a baby pigeon before, though I have had a couple of interesting experiences a few years back with a baby squirrel and a creature my brother rescued, which both of us just could not identify! And here was this tiny little baby with a gaping wound on its head. Honestly speaking, I didn't expect it to survive even for a single day. However, I could not abandon it and leave it outdoors. My dog did not seem to want to hurt it, rather she brought it to my notice. However there are numerous cats in our neighbourhood that happen to love hunting pigeons! So I quickly brought the little baby indoors, cleaned it up as best I could, wrapped it up in a warm blanket and placed it in a box to try and calm her down. She seemed to be okay, except for the head wound.
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| "Are you clicking my picture?" |
Then came the next challenge-how and what am I supposed to feed such a little baby bird? Like I said, I am pretty new to this, and I knew pigeons cant be fed cow's milk. After endless hours of researching on Google the all-knowing, I decided to try and feed it a few rice grains, which was another adventure in its own. I was initially terrified of opening the beak for fear of hurting her, (I refer to my baby pigeon as "her" because although you can't tell the gender of a pigeon unless it grows to adulthood, I like to believe it was female-let's call it a little feminism from me) but I managed to feed her a few grains and got her to drink some fresh water. She was pretty hungry actually, and gulped down whatever I put down her little baby beak.
Amazingly, my baby pigeon actually made it through the night, and in fact seemed much more active the next day. The wound to the head thankfully was only superficial and except for a big yellow crust on the head, she did not have any other injuries. She was pretty little and still had yellow baby hair (down?) all over, such a cute little ball of feathers.. Of course, she could not fly yet. I just loved the way she would pull her neck up when I brought my hand to her, wings flapping nonstop, chirping for all she was worth. She seemed to accept me as her new mommy in about a day or two, and after a month, she would come running (not flying yet) at the sound of my voice and follow me wherever I went-bedroom, living room, bathroom.. Many a time I had to give her a timeout in her box so she wouldn't follow me into the bathroom and get sopping wet. She also loved perching on my hand, climbing up to my shoulder and head and having me walk her around the house.
She did learn to eat in about a month's time, but she loved being fed, so she would poke her tiny beak into her feed once or twice and then turn her curious eyes up towards me, as though to say, "feed me, mommy" and I would always eventually cave in and end up feeding her. It was a pretty sight watching her thirstily gulping down water, though. :)
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| Growing into a real beauty |
Around late February came the "first flight". I lifted her out of the box one fine morning, only to have her swoop out of my hands to the floor below. I did feel like a proud mommy that day, seeing my baby fly for the first time. Then came the endless days of flying practice-flying out of my hands, jumping out of the box, flying through the air and crashing into stuff (she apparently couldn't figure out how to land smoothly), the resulting leg pains that went on for days.. The first time she had leg pains I was really scared she had a disease, but amazingly she recovered in a couple of days and was back to normal.
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| Perched on my treadmill! |
The wound on the head took about a month to heal, but recover it did, with only a big bald vulture like patch left as evidence of it. The yellow crust dried up and cracked, and easily came off eventually. I was so thankful it was only a skin wound and nothing more.
Her flying pursuits went on well, and one fine day I was pleasantly surprised to find her perched up on the ventillator above the window, about 8-10 feet high! Thankfully she hadn't flown out the other side, but seemed to be gleefully watching and wondering what I thought about her achievement! I managed to get her down from there but it gave me the shivers to think what would have happened if she had flown out!
Well, life went on in this fashion till March. She still didn't like eating herself, though she had obviously gotten the hang of it (she would greedily eat stones and mud when I was busy gardening, but did not want to eat her food!). And she was growing into a real beauty. It amazed me to think how much she had grown in such a short period.
Around Thursday last week, I noticed she again seemed to be unable to walk. I suspected she must have hurt herself flying, and expected her to get better. However by evening she seemed pretty listless and her head seemed to be falling off to a side. I continued to feed and give her water in hopes she would recover, but she only seemed to be getting worse.. Sadly, I lost her last Saturday :(
This blog post is in remembrance of my sweet, naughty, mischievous little baby pigeon and all the good times we had together in such a short span of time. Miss you, sweet baby birdie...
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