A co-worker
found this little swallow flapping around helplessly on the parking lot. Since
I have experience taking care of (injured) birds, I took it in.
I think
this is a big baby that just wasn’t ready to fly, or was exhausted and landed
on the parking lot. Swallows cant take off from the ground, so it ended up
flapping around helplessly and probably got further dehydrated.
It spent
most of the first day in my care just sleeping, so I guess it was exhausted. I
cut up a sock to put it in and carried it around inside my shirt. That always
calms little birds down :)
A friend volunteered
hunting insects with me and force-feeding the little guy or girl and I even
bought mealworms for when I just couldn’t catch any other insects (Must have
given the neighbours some good laughs at that!!)
The little swallow
became quite tame as you can see!
I researched
how to release swallows and tried releasing it twice each day I had it in my
care, but it just fell helpless to the ground again.
“We” even
did flying-exercises together (lol) and it “hopped” around on the floor like a
bat, so it seemed like it really tried it’s best to gain strength and get to
fly again.
I really
thought he or she would make it and I could get to release it successfully some
day, but on the third day I came home from work to it being cold and dead. It
made me very sad…