LEAVE YOUNG BIRDS BE!!


Please, do not hamper a young bird's life by picking it up, and taking it home with you. It is calling its parents to help them in locating it.
After fledgling from the nest, the parent birds will keep feeding it, and look out for it, until it will be able to look after itself.
And the reason you cannot see a parent is because of your own proxomity to the young bird. And while you are ebating if or not you should take the bird home, you keep the parent from giving it well needed nutrition in the form of a meal!


Photos

The photos on this blog are all taken by me. If there is any picture you might want to use for any other than personal use, please drop me a line to the email address shown in the sidebar on the right.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Dusting the feathers

House Sparrows, Passer domesticus

The male;





On my way home, I spotted a family of House Sparrows, Passer domesticus, busily trying to rid themself of parasites, and get a good clean.
Providing Birds with food is part of the way how we can help them. Water is just as important. Flight, and therefore clean feathers, is vital to them. It is how they can take flight to escape danger as well as, finding food, finding a mate and find the best breeding spot.
Also Birds need water to drink. Young birds in the nest get their liquid from the food brought in by their parents. Mostly in the shape of Insect larvae, which as well as fluid, contains bags of protein.
People still ask me about feeding birds in summer. The "But Birds will get lazy" idea is still doing the rounds, apparently. Instinctively, Birds, (and many other animals) will search high and low to find live food for the chicks. The comprehension that with this protein-packed the chicks will grow faster than by feeding on protein-rich seeds.
The reason I feed them in summer, is so that the parents, after foraging from Sunrise, to provide for their brood, they can get a quick feed for themselves. They are ravished at the end of the day, and would have no energy left at all to get some food for themselves.

With the Birds moving about constantly, getting real sharp pictures wasn't easy. But my, Fun they were having definitely. They'd fly up and settle elsewhere, in a different formation. When I was about 3 metres from them, a car arrived on the scene to spoil the fun. For them as well as me.













Both the Sparrows and I were being observed from above by one of my friends, the Hooded Crow, Corvus cornix.

3 comments:

  1. That's really cute. i think I just saw one here in Nevada or so I thought. Anyway this has been an interesting entry. Thank you and more power to you and ton your site.

    WHEELS

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Mary. Yes, house Sparrows have settled over the North American continent. (after the english brought them over, to have familiar birds around them when they colonised their patch in the early days.

    Thank you for your comments about Birding on Wheels, and power to you too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 31, 2010

    Great photos of the House Sparrows Yoke. I have House Sparrows in my garden doing exactly the same in the soil.

    ReplyDelete

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Yoke.