The rescue of a baby bird.
Sydney, Australia

On November 12th a baby bird fell out of the nest. Our neighbour rescued it and put it in a box with leaves and flowers and fed it with an eye dropper. It is not a good photo - the baby is really brown with flecks of beige.

We could not find where the baby had come from so our neighbour put the box in the fork of a paper bark tree to see if the mother bird would look after the baby.

The mother flew back and forth sitting on branches quite close to the box and "chattering" to the baby.

We saw her in the box but the box moved a bit as she flew away - it was not very safe.

The cats were sitting nearby and watching.

The mother looks black against the sky but she is really brown with specks of light brown and beige.

This is a noisy miner bird - the same as the mother and baby.

Peter Bennett made a new nest for the bird family from a basket.

He climbed up a ladder and tied the new nest on a small branch using wire. The branch was too small for cats to climb along.

Next he gently carried the baby bird up the ladder and put it in the new nest.

The mother bird hopped about from branch to branch watching what he was doing.

He came down and put the ladder away and we waited to see what would happen.

Wonderful!

The mother bird is feeding the baby. She then got right into the nest and started "fixing" it - throwing leaves out and bringing in bits of bark. She looked for insects in the bark of the tree too.

The new nest is up high in the tree - away from the cats and tied securely with wire. The baby is cheeping loudly now and the mother talks back to it. It will soon be big enough to fly.