Chick Rehab
First Appearances
Rob being revived with water 20th June 2018
Rob looking better 20th June 2018
He was probably dehydrated and hungry. Our son and his partner were nearby at that time, she immediately went across to the nearest chemist and got a syringe so we could try and give him some water.
Using the syringe we dribbled a little water round his beak (good old Google said you shouldn't drip water straight into its beak - birds have a complicated lung system and you can end up drowning them ). Surprise, surprise he seemed to swallow some. As time went on he swallowed more and more and chirped up to the extent that he was able to get his feet under himself.
We got a plastic container and recovered one of the nests from the tree to put him in on some cotton wool initially to support him.
We had no idea if it was a he or a she or even of it's species. We had had some Robins and Blackbirds around the garden and its chest, such as it was, looked a bit tawny like a young Robins chest so we thought it must be a Robin at first, and for want of a nothing else decided to call it 'Rob Robin'.
We scratched our heads as regards food to start of with, but had some dry hedgehog food and meal-worms for the birds so crushed and mixed all that with some water. This seemed to work, though the syringe turned out no good for the 'wet mash' and we ended up feeding him with a pair of tweezers from one of our old biology dissection kits.
Chicks get their water usually from the food they eat, the 'wet mash' we fed him did not seem to give him enough and he would still take water from a syringe though.
We continued to feed him up throughout that day, possibly every 20 minutes or so, as he started to perk up more after each and every feast and became quite chipper by the evening. That night we left him alone in his container, the nest and box now padded out with moss from the garden.