Toffee/Walnut

The mynah fledging died last Monday, after a mere four days under our care. It had spiritless pupils, and a constantly damp and dirty vent to which was stuck bits of faecal material – the mark of an unhealthy bird. We suspect it came from a condemned brood (diseased? parasitised?) for its sibling was already found dead when the nest was removed from the ceiling.

Immediately after its demise came another young bird in need of maternal attention. The young yellow-vented bulbul arrived in style: on top of the family car, discovered after the car was parked back in the basement carpark at home. (There’s a bunch of low-hanging bushes just above the entrance to the carpark, and it’s possible that there’s a bulbul nest there, and the fledging did a spaghetti Western stunt and dropped onto the car as it was passing by underneath. At least, that’s as far-fetched a scenario as my imagination would allow.) This little one’s doing very well, consuming an average of a dozen mealworms each meal, with up to 10 feeding sessions per day earlier this week. It has since become more reasonable with its feeding(-on-demand) times, but it’s learnt to become more selective and would refuse either the mealworms or bird feed and preferring the other. It’s been chirpy, very observant, capable of short flights, and obsessed with preening. The silly thing isn’t very good with keeping its balance on the perch and so it would fall a few centremetres sideways – and downwards – whenever it tries to scratch its head with its leg over the wing, before it flutters frantically for a few moments and regains its upright grip.

It would appear that, being hand-reared and having imprinted on humans, the bird is now too tame to be released into the wild. Different schools of thought here; there are yet some who believe that it can survive on instinct. But we’ll see – its future is still uncertain.