Unwanted Children - no Bulbul

[GregH]

Being the sucker I am and the only one in my compound with birds I was presented with a an orphaned baby yellow vented bulbul yesterday by the guard at our compound's swimming pool. Since it was already dark I put it to bed and today have fed it 5 times (5:45, 7:30; 13:00, 17:00 and 18:45) with 3-4 meal worms, mashed quail egg, banana and mango, I also gave it about 0.2-3mL water each feed. Does any one know if this sounds reasonable? The amount would total no more than 1/3 tsp each feed. It can flutter but is a long way from being independant and given that I've never been able to raise a finch I have grave concerns for this little bugger's future. Even if i can manage it, I go to Australia on Tuesday week (June 2)and so I'd better have the feeding sorted by then if the helpers have to look after it. Does anyone have any advice?

My bird keeping up here has now reached a new level of illegality but it was either take it or forget that it would soon be cat food.

Greg

[finchbreeder]

Good luck with your new baby. The trouble with a law that says let it die cause you cant have it is that it goes against the grain.
LML

[iaos]

Hi Greg,

This website appears to have some useful info on hand raising birds, but also suggests a lot of commerical products that you may not have available.

http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/wildlife-eco ... ile_birds/

Good luck

Ian

[jusdeb]

As much as we should obey the law its not always a black and white world and we do have a conscience after all .

[ray_223]

My understanding with injured wildlife is that you can look after it until you can contact your local wires representitive who will organsise a time to collect.
Wires itself may have it's own problems but I beleive that is the correct course of action.

[arthur]

You seem to be on the right track . . and these birds (well red-whiskered any way) are pretty tough . . consider kitten pellets (higher in protein than adult cat) soaked in hot water till mashable . . consider crickets which are probably available over there . . keep up the fruit so that droppings are reasonably liquid and constipation is avoided . . diced pawpaw is easily force fed as are small grapes (which may not be available to you) . . these birds are omnivores so probably hard to go really wrong with a bit of everything . . Dont go overboard on mealworms as they can "jam up the works" in some young birds whose digestive systems cannot handle the tough skins, though this bird looks old enough . . Mealworms are over-rated in their value as a live food

Best of luck . . As to what to do with it when it matures . . Find a mate and bring them over to Oz

Oops . . better not or you will be more than slightly illegal

[GregH]

Well it survived the first day and now begs which makes feeding a lot easier. I can't get crickets here in Los Banos but in Manila I could but since I'm coming back to Sydney on Tuesday the meal worms will have to do. I will try to get hold of the kitten food too but again that may be too speciaized for the provinces. There are a couple of wild-life rescue centers around that I know of but unless you give them a large parrot donating anything is death sentence. There is no equivalent of WIRES so it's got to be me until Tuesday and then the helpers take over. Must seem strange to them that there children starving in this country and I try to save a common bird.

[finchbreeder]

All life is precious, and sorry to state the obvious. There are more people on the planet than there are of any type of bird. So not so strange really.
LML

[Diane]

You can only do what you can, with what you have. At this moment its is a baby bird. Best of luck.

[GregH]

It seems to like the soaked kitten food. I just hope it doesn't get haemochromatosis (toxcisity from excessive iron intake) which apparently is danger for fruit eating birds given dog and cat food. If anyone's interested there are photos of adults and juveniles on the Oriental Bird Images site http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.ph ... y_ID=&p=34.