Duck Bill
The Story Of A Moorhen Who Made Friends With A Parrot!!
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Birdie - The Tame Moorhen
You often read of unusual animal friendships, we encountered such a friendship when we took in a rescued Moorhen. Some years ago, our son was walking along a busy road and spotted some youths handling what looked like a baby bird, the youths placed this chick in the middle of the road, knowing full well it faced inevitable death from traffic.
Our son ran in the road and carefully picked up the chick and brought it home. We knew the bird must have been snatched from a local waterway and although we went to take a look around, there was no sign of the chicks family, they were long gone. So, we took on the care of this chick and hand reared her from about four weeks old. We called her 'Birdie' and she came to know her name, this is her story.
We gathered as much information as we could to feed this chick a natural diet, we eventually formulated a diet of various foods and live insects, and she thrived. We gave her a mixture of: soaked bread and breakfast cereal, sardines, watercress, lettuce, apple and some other human foods. Her favourite was live crickets, which we purchased from a pet shop. We went fishing in the waterways for small insects, as grown up as we were, we travelled with a small fishing net and a bucket to catch sticklebacks (minnows), water boatmen, water skaters, water caterpillars, beetles, spiders, moths and gnats! We spent many days trying to find live crickets in the house that had escaped from the container we kept them in, when we couldn't find them, Birdie did, and with a quick trot across the room she would snatch the cricket and enjoy her snack!
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Every day she would take a bath in a small bowl of warm water, and she loved it, splashing about soaking her down, she would spend hours preening her down feathers and looking proud! She slept in a self- made modified rabbit hutch, filled with soft covers to keep her warm. During the day, she would play running across the floor and snuggling under our necks. We had no other birds at this time so she had the run of the house.
As she grew we decided to have her checked out by a vet who confirmed we had a healthy hen, he was more than impressed with her health considering her unfortunate early start in life. We continued with the diet we had formulated and she progressed exceptionally well. Now she was too big for the bowl to wash in and required the use of a bath! Birdie would half run, half fly up the stairs each day and jump into the bath! She would waddle up and down and swim under water, she had a beautiful silver colouring to her feathers under water, she would spend a couple of hours playing with plastic toys in the bath, and any sponge you would give her.
Birdie was far too tame to ever be released back into the wild, so she became our pet. She ruled the house, always following us about and chasing our tomcat, who was more fearful of Birdie than any bird he had seen before! The Moorhen was far too big to sleep in our modified hutch any more so she made herself a nest on the top of a bookcase; she pinched gold tinsel from our Christmas tree and added bits of paper, each night she would climb up the bookcase to go to sleep.
During the winter months she would grab a cushion from the sofa and place it in front of the fire and just sit there waiting for us to turn the heating on, once the warmth reached her, she would open her wings as if to sunbathe in the heat.
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We had been caring for Birdie for sometime when we bought our first parrot home, Bobby our Blueheaded Pionus, we were mindful of germs and worried that having such different birds in the same room could cause health problems, so we created a room with many features especially for the Moorhen, but each day she would still come into the lounge to visit us. Bobby fascinated her and he loved her company. Birdie would walk along the bottom of the parrot gym and Bobby would throw down food for her, she happily accepted everything he gave. Bobby would try to move closer to the Moorhen, hoping to preen her feathers, but she was very cautious of a parrot's beak!
They remained firm friends, and when Bobby was ill, Birdie would cheer him up by doing a few acrobatics, she would fly onto the ceiling fan and spin it around so she could ride in circles! She would climb onto the curtain rail and run back and forth making a sound like a train. When we had to give Bobby his medication, Birdie would run over to us and carefully observe we wasn't hurting Bobby. They enjoyed each other's company so much so that Birdie became to behave like a parrot. Many times Birdie attempted to climb the parrot gym, just to see what it would be like at the top where Bobby would play. Many times poor Birdie would fall back down, landing on the sofa, but she would pick herself up and ruffle her feathers and try again!
One day her determination knew no bounds, and perch by perch she slowly climbed up, using her long legs and flapping her wings untill she finally reached the top! Bobby was so excited when she finally got there he jumped up out of pleasure and surprise! We managed to capture this moment on camera, each picture observing Birdie take each perch in her stride until she finally reached the top!
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For a long time Birdie and Bobby were close buddies, looking forward to the time each day they would spend together, but it was obvious they could never be friends in a real sense, they needed friends of their own kind. With a great deal of thought we decided we should find a proper home for Birdie, one where she could be with her own kind and enjoy the freedom of the outdoors. After making various telephone calls we found a lovely lady in Gloucestershire that had an outdoor enclosure with a large water pond and waterfowl of her own. We checked the place out and it was wonderful, we knew that Birdie would eventually be happy here, and would make friends, even breed with her own kind. The last we heard she was doing just fine and had settled in well, she had even made new friends.
Bobby has new friends of his own, his best pal is Oscar, a Maximillian Pionus, although both male they are extremely bonded. They love spending time together and play for hours, on the same parrot gym, that Birdie, one day managed to climb.
We have many happy memories of Birdie, and we miss her, and we know Bobby does too, but part of loving is letting go, we loved her enough to do this.
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