He gets better at it all the time (and fast)

think we adopted Durian around 1.5 weeks ago and wrote about that days later. We’ve adopted several frail or very young birds lately. Durian is very distinguishable (Rianne spots him from a distant room) and he’s growing fast.

Today, for the first time, Durian not only found the courage to go on the door knob but also stay there when I open the door/s. I fed him with several different bottles. Sometimes he struggles a little with balance or tries to jump on the bottles. Sometimes Sweepy attacks him out of jealousy. But we’re getting there.

Durian is probably here to stay (long time). He’s only months old and can probably live for 15 years. Since we adopted him as a child/baby, we’re very attached to him already.

In just a week

wo remarkable things happened today, maybe more. In recent hours baby Durian (the young bird [1, 2]) learned to sit on the doorknob, repeatedly, pleading for more seeds. Birds grow fast, so after a week of feeding Durian (and his friend Peanut) Durian is almost mature/adult size. He’s nowhere as small as he was a week ago. His eyes still show the young age, but the body grew a lot. He also sounds different.

Astonishingly, another bird, mature but not looking entirely healthy, showed up at the door, hanging basket, above the door … and stayed there without any fear of me. I don’t know this bird. I never saw it before. It has unique green eyes.

If it comes back, maybe we’ll adopt it and name it. I reckon it has had good experiences with humans and therefore has no fear of them.

The Sick Bird seems to be recuperating. It looks and behaves better each day. It didn’t sleep here overnight last night (we checked several times).

Today I sunbathed for over an hour because it still feel like another (late) lucky chance to absorb hear and bright light before winter sets in.

When it’s cold and wintry ill birds don’t have good survival odds.

Better ill than dead

he movie “Animal Graveyard” or something similar (not “Animal Hospital”) gave me the creeps as a young kid; I’m not sure if I even watched it, I at least heard of it. “Elephants’ graveyard” also; anything to do with death…

Recently we’ve attracted some ill or weak birds, who use our yard like a sanctuary and even stay overnight. It’s a bit painful to see them in poor health; but we need to do our best to help them because they ask for it.

All good so far

IVE months ago we set up the shells’ tank to split them apart from all the fish. All the shells seem healthy (to date I only saw one or two dead shells, that’s less than 1% of the whole) and they seem increasingly active too. If their population keeps growing, however, oxygen capacity will decrease. Then a bigger tank might become necessary.

The shells or snails seem to be of Malaysia origin (no predators in the tank though). They came with our loaches. They reproduce very fast.

Babysitting

wo days ago I wrote about Durian and Peanut. They’re still here a lot (but not most) of the day and a somewhat sick (seemingly adult) bird parked here overnight again, waiting for the next meal. The joke is, it’s there to protect me and I’m here to protect the bird from an ambush by cats when it’s dark. It’s rainy today, so the birds need oil. To have oil in their feathers they need seeds.

Last time we fed the 70+ birds in the park was yesterday. It’s close to a local ASDA, so afterwards I go shop there. The joke is that those birds give me some bargain charm. I found plenty of good things and I enjoy them in my coffee at this very moment.

I expect to publish many articles today (40-50 in total), so I’ll be at my chair most of the time (except when Rianne and I jog) and will babysit the birds.

The world needs more birds. It needs birds more than it needs humans.

Second time in a week

ack in March, for the first time, we noticed a bird staying at the window all night long (until daytime). Sometimes we wonder if it’ll happen again.

Something similar is happening several times this week, as baby birds either sleep at the windows or the higher slope, in effect staying here overnight. I think it’s generally safe, but it is also unusual and a generally bad habit. The darkness is a risk to them and they don’t have the advantage of collective vigilance (like adults alerting them in the face of nearby danger).

At the moment the aim is to help the small birds grow ahead of a cold winter.

We are accelerating the causes of climate change

s expected, tonight it’s about 20 degrees outside, feels like some sort of subtropical summer at nighttime. It’s hard to complain, as it feels pleasant, but at the same time it is atypical and another glaring sign of climate change.

Lately I’ve seen way too many slop boosters (basically cheering for a large contributor to climate change) and nearly no press coverage at all regarding climate change.

The Web is crooked, the media seems dead, and nowadays I scroll very fast past sites and headlines, seeing lots of them are junk and chaff, not news.

We should speak about climate change as much as we speak of Russia.