Baby Blackbird - did I do the right thing?

[Gadget]

I don't think you will have upset the life balance :-)

I would have done the same thing

[hamamelis]

I wouldn't worry so much about him returning to the wild- we reared quite a few wild birds when I was a kid (we were the local animal nutters, so people used to give us injured or stranded animals).

We just started giving them more and more time outside (with access to their old familiar cage until they completely ignored it), and fed them out there, until they just gradually got more and more independant, and relied less and less on the bird table, until some of them moved away. If you try and rush it (or when people literally just dump an animal in the woods or something) that's when you get problems, as they do need a lot of time to adjust, but birds will just gradually leave if you don't try and keep them around. Just make sure there's some food around for him, and let him go at his own speed.

His eyes were open when you got him, so he won't be fully imprinted on humans, though he might be a bit confused...

Some of our babies lived in the garden for several years and met nice wild partners, and a few of the ones that left would occasionally show up again years later

[Potstubsdustbins]

Thanks for the update FB, nice to know the little un is doing well.

Potty

[Martin H]

I think you've done brilliantly, FB.

It sounds like you've done all you can to show him how to forage and I'm sure that in time his desire to find a mate will take him away from you.

When that time comes, I wonder if he will still come visit when you ring the bell?

[FB.]

I just sat watching Munch digging in his tub for worms and a fly came into his cage.

As the fly passed him he snapped at it with his beak and caught it! Great catch!

He's now gone back to digging for worms.

[FB.]

Quick update....

Wife has mislaid the camera, so no pictures until she finds it. If she hasn't found it in the next few days you lot can have her email address and send her complaints.

Munch is still fine. Flying fairly well. Mostly feeding himself now; his beak is quite strong and also quite precise in his ability to use it.
He's had a bath every day for the last few days - really enjoying it with the hot weather (birds don't sweat, so they find it more difficult to cool down).
I've had a good supply of small yellowish-coloured craneflies coming into the house in recent evenings and he loves them.
I had to take the mirror and bell out of his cage because every few hours he kept fighting with the imposter which he kept "seeing" in his cage, resulting in a lot of aggressive posturing, pecking of the bell/mirror, flapping and screeching - I feared he might do himself an injury with his angry fluttery outbursts.

He shows natural fear of strange noises, strange objects and also any birds he sees through the patio doors in the garden or in the sky above (we get lots of housemartins, seagulls, rooks and many others flying around above us).

He was out of his cage a couple of hours ago when we had dinner, and decided to fly onto my shoulder, where he sat for all of dinner - leaving me a nice present.
On the subject of nice presents; he has a sense of humour because he did a number two on the number two key of the wife's laptop.

While I'm working at my computer, he can't resist flying over to my desk and wandering around in front of me - sometimes jumping on the keyboard and occasionally managing to press a button hard enough to type an extra letter. He almost deleted a file by stomping around on the keyboard when I had to answer the phone while I was doing some computer disk cleanup.

A forgotten song was playing from our collection ("See the Lights" by Simple Minds) and Munch was happily twittering away while it was playing, yet if I paused the song to listen to what Munch was chirping, Munch would go silent - only to start chirping again when the song was restarted; he paused every time I paused the song.
I've tried it several times now - and played the song four times - and he'll chatter away during the song, but will go silent if I pause the song. Very interesting.

Given his increasing tendency to be twittering and chattering to himself - and the very aggressive outbursts against the imposter in his cage - I'm fairly sure he'll turn out to be a "he".
He doesn't show any aggression to us though.

[FB.]

Camera found a couple of hours ago.

Some pictures of him testing his bowl of water - he has since jumped in it for a bath; some of which ended up giving me a shower!
Some better pictures hopefully tomorrow.

The back of his cage is splattered with specks of dirt where he was earlier digging for worms. The newspaper under the hay is curled up at the edges where he can't resist tugging on it and peeping under it hoping to find a bug (sometimes I drop a dead cranefly down the gaps to encourage him to find it).

He's more interested in eating craneflies, mosquitoes and moths nowadays - plenty available coming in the open doors and windows at dusk (we put him in his cage when we open the windows and doors to cool the house mid-evening).

He's much more grown up now.
He spends about half the day out of the cage, free to wander around.
He spends a lot of time searching in corners and around the edges of carpets for things he can pick up. He'll eat almost anything pea-sized - even if it's not food - so we have to be careful.
He prefers to run around rather than fly, but he can fly reasonably well if he wants to.

He also spends a lot of time sitting on (upturned) shoes on the doormat, sunbathing or just looking out of the window and chattering/singing to himself for sometimes an hour at a time.

I think it might be only a few days before we open the door and let him wander outside if he wants to.
If we need to get him back in I think we have a good chance because when he's wandering around the house we only have to call him and he'll dash over to us. He regularly pesters us for food scraps and will often land on our desk or our shoulders and rather vocally make his point that he wants more food.

[FB.]

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Here's the earliest picture of him, from late June, for comparison with the latest pictures above:

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[veggiechicken]

You should write a book about Munch and his adventures in FBLand
There are a lot of young blackbirds here, all scuttling around under fruit bushes and running out from under my feet. Flying seems to be the last thing on their mind

[FB.]

There are a lot of young blackbirds here, all scuttling around under fruit bushes and running out from under my feet. Flying seems to be the last thing on their mind

Yes, I've been picking whitecurrants recently and most of the time I end up startling a few young blackbirds who were hiding on the ground under the rather dense foliage (my several red/white/black currant plants are a bit out of control; they need a tidy-up this winter!).
The startled young blackbirds also seem to not be great at flying - more of a running start and a flutter which results in a shallow angle of ascent into a couple of mature trees nearby (Rowan and Myrobalan).

[Feral007]

He's a character then FB! Interesting hearing how he's going, and also how the wild ones are pretty much the same.

[FB.]

Sitting on the Captain's chair after having a bath (and he's now on my keyboard pecking at every key I touch).

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[Monkey_honk]

I would have done the same thing. Well done you

[FB.]

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A couple of pictures - first one shows him straining to reach a large fly which I'd just swatted and was offering to him.
Second and third: just sitting on my finger. Notice the big yellow "lips" around his beak have mostly faded away.
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[FB.]

Oh - notice my black fingernail in the picture offering him a fly!
It's a result of staining from using my thumb to pull quarters of cherries off their stone - the current batch of cherries that he's getting are black and my hands look like they're covered in blood after I've chopped some up for him.
The softer cherries I give to him whole and he manages to peck them apart.
His poo is often purplish as a result of the current black cherries.

Did I mention that he LOVES cherries?