Rosita The Rosella

“Broken bones may mend quickly, but brains take time”

QBN

Rosita the Rosella

Hey BirdNerds!!! I’m so sorry I have not written in AGES!!!!
I’ve been pretty busy…
Anyway, here is a story about one of my recent birds. Rosie.

Rosie was found at a nearby school near a path into the bush. One of the students found her there, lying on the side. She was picked up and they called Fauna Rescue. She came to us and we put her straight in the aviary.

With some birds, even if they know how to eat, they don’t know if the food is good or not. They think we are trying to poison them, when we are certainly not. So we had to encourage her to eat but she soon started eating properly. She was a granivore, so she ate mostly seeds and fruit sometimes.

Boy, could she shriek, as she did whenever we went in the aviary with her.

At the time, we thought she had been concussed when she was found. We reckoned she was getting better, well enough to be released. But when we tried, we found she couldn’t fly at all!!! We had to take her back. We waited some more. She was a great climber, but not a great flyer. We thought we saw her fly, though, after a while, so we took her again to be released. The bird seemed fine and its wing did not seem damaged.

We opened the door and she ran out. She flew, but only a little, so that dad could catch her easily. We took her back again. She had definitely improved, but not enough.
We couldn’t work out why she could not use her wing.

We did not give up on her. Soon she started flying more!!! She was getting stronger, and though we thought there may be a problem with her right wing, it looked pretty much fine. So… Third time lucky!!! We were going to try to release her again…

Third time lucky… Or not.
She STILL wasn’t strong enough!!! Only just, though. She wasn’t very good at landing and she couldn’t fly that high. We had no idea why, so we went to the vet. We Were now thinking she may have a broken wing…

You might be thinking she would have to be put down, but…

The vet said she looked fine (there was a huge amount of screeching when the vet held her) and she probably just needed more time. She said it WASNT a broken wing. So, it was a few weeks later when we tried yet again.

You probably we be expecting she had to be taken back again. But no!!! She flew up, up into the trees, perched so high we could barely see her. YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Rosita!!!!!!! Successfully released! She looked happy and at home, and we knew she would be fine. There were lots of other rosellas around, too!

The moral of this is,
In Rositas case, it was nerilogical damage, and that was why she couldn’t fly. Birds take a while to repair from this. It wasn’t damage to her wing, it was kind of like concussion as she had hit her head. She was lucky it was not a broken wing.

We now have a new bird…