Rob the Dunnock

His daily trips outside continued. With each one he expanded his horizons and the amount of time he spent before he appeared fed up and want to rest. This day was his first trip to forage around under the blackberry bush, though I am not actually sure he found anything to eat was was gamely pecking at any and everything he came across.

The following day, the 27th, we tried to get him to explore a bit higher in the garden and try a few greenfly, we have a couple of 'red berry bush' (no idea of their proper name!) that are a meter or so high, we lifted him to the top and he happily jumped onto the top, but then , just as happily and quickly he jumped down to the bottom and underneath it to peck about and explore. He obviously wasn't keen on being high up and exposed.

Once he was down he was running around like a train, exploring everything under the shrubs.

We thought we would try and be a bit more realistic in the house if we could as regards somewhere to live and explore. We had an old 'Christmas stand' made from a slice of tree truck , with a hole in it, an put a Leylandii branch vertically in the hole to act as a little tree. He did seem quite enamored with it and when we introduced him to it happily jumped up into it while we were watching a bit of television (2018 World Cup - South Korea v Germany) so he could get a better view of the game no doubt.

We put the tree under a table by his box so he could move between the two when he liked and it was still 'dark' and undercover.

The tree seemed to give him confidence. The next day (28th June) he spent a lot of the time perched in the tree under the table. He even seemed to refuse to come down to eat, resorting to chirping till we fed him by tweezers in his tree and gave him drinks by syringe!

We did add more to his box though, we gave him a bowl of water! This was another attempt to try and get him to drink more, however after a few seconds studying it and dabbling with his beak, he had better ideas and jumped in for his first bath!

When he did explore he was again more adventurous, he hopped on top of the table under which he had his tree, this had an Orchid in a big blur pot, he hopped onto the side of the pot and then up on to the Orchid leaves to look at the flowers. He had a bit of trouble with this as the leaves were quite shiny and slippery - as was the glaze on its bowl, he had a tumbling moment from the leaves as he slipped and fell a a few feet to the ground. He didn't appear to hurt himself and hopped back on to his tree to think about his experience perhaps.

This was the first a a few 'falls' from various heights over the next fews days, I suppose they are that light at this age that they seem protected from any damage, and it certainly does not seem to stop them.

The next day (Friday 29th June) we tried to expand his horizons further by trying to encourage him to flap his wings. We started by putting him on our fingers and lifting him and lowering so that he put out his wings to try and steady himself. This seemed to work but he wasn't very interested in taking off, even to jump across form our fingers to a bush or the raspberry canes.

He did flutter off once, only to drop down to me knee and lap - but it was a start.

Latter in the day we brought another larger potted shrub into the garden room in case he did decide to start hopping or fluttering higher and placed it near to his box and little tree. I tried the same fluttering trick to encourage him to hop to his new tree. He did decide to take his first flight then - but ignored the shrub and made for the gap through the double doors into the lounge to where we usually sit down to watch telly. You could see him become undecided what actually to do once he got there, a meter or so off the ground. He turned left towards the couch but flew into the wall instead and down to the ground again. He was fine after his tumble and returned to shelter in his new, taller, tree.

That night he even hopped up to roost in it with his little head under his wing.

Saturday saw us on flight encouragement duty again. Rob was looking very bright and attentive, but not really that bothered with actually flying. Wendy was balancing him on her arm, raising it up and down slowly, quite low to the ground. Rob decided he was too low to the ground and decided to hop up her arm, onto the her shoulders to the back of her neck. He then decided it would be a good idea to climb on to her head.

Wendy was quite worried he may decide to 'relieve' himself on her head :). She stood up, and Rob started to look very interested in making a flight attempt.

Off he went but he still did not have the idea that he has to land somewhere, perhaps because he had no one to watch and see, and flew over his shrub and into the wall again. He tumbled to the ground some 6 feet, unharmed and was soon up in his tree again.

Sunday was a bit of a rest day and exploratory day round the garden.

We kept taking Rob out and put him in the apple tree to hop about in and explore, and down in the undergrowth to explore.

The following day Rob seemed very at ease, when we came down in the morning he had started to nestle down on the top of one of the chairs he had flown up to after he had woke up and fed and watered himself.

When the sun came and we sat on the rug as the sun streamed down to see how Rob was, he hopped down to join usnestled down on the rug in the sun to warm himself.

We took him outside again as much as we could for him to explore and peck about and put into trees to perch and look around. We felt he needed the oppertunity to do things for himself and resolved to leave him by himself in the garden the following day.