Saturday 19 July 2008

Complan

Today has been a rough day with wind and rain, and the occasional bright sunshine. I have been baking biscuits and generally pottering about the house. I updated some of the museum pages on my Pterosaur site and made some avian Complan.

48 hour on and the baby starlings are getting to be a handful. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth rescuing them. Starling populations have been in decline over the last 10 years and this year they seem to be showing some recovery. These birds have evolved to be gregarious and aggressive eaters. They put away food like there is no tomorrow, and with a relatively short gut, the gut contents are soon egested, so there is a lot of cleaning up to do.

Nuts and sunflower seeds go straight through, undigested. To get around this problem I have made a mixture of ground up sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and dates, mixed with oatmeal and a small amount of golden syrup. Pass it through a sieve and mix with water to a gruel consistency. It is easy to squirt into the birds open mouths. Every other feed is berries and biscuit crumbs, and a little cat food (starlings naturally eat fruit and insects).

The little terrors are getting very lively and starting to show a little manipulative skill with their beaks. Hope the will soon be able to pick up food for themselves. Looking after them is quite a bind at times.

1 comment:

Robert said...

It's Monday morning and no update since Saturday. Have the baby starlings taken over completely? If you're not too careful they may decide you are their dad after all and want to stay!