Every now and then we are confronted with a story that
beggars belief. I believe this is one of those stories.
Boss, the breeding male in my Kookaburra family and I have a
relationship that now goes back 8 years, but this story is something that
happened in January 2015.
One afternoon Boss came in with a dreadful wound to his eye.
I thought of calling wires, but the downside to that was they would remove Boss
for treatment, later to release him back to his territory. Why this wasn’t a
consideration is that if you remove a Kookaburra from its territory for even a
shot period (a week or so), the others would see it as an intruder and drive it
away or worse, kill it. This would be catastrophic to my Kooka family as Boss
was the breeding male and my good mate.
God, how do I administer that I thought? The only solution I
could come up with was to spray his eye with a spray bottle, but he was a wild bird,
how was he going to react to that?
And this is where my story becomes extraordinary, Boss let
me spray his eye. I can’t think of a thing more alien to him that what I was
doing. You need to check out the video at the end of this post.
Normally Boss would come in of an arvo for our bonding
sessions, but this was different. He was visiting first thing in the morning as
well as late in the arvo. It was as if he was aware of his treatment programme.
So every morning & every arvo I would spray his eye with a warm saline solution
followed by a couple of close up photos to post on the Birds of Oz FB page.
By the 8th, Boss’s eye looked much better. The wound was a fraction of its original size. The eye was still weeping, but that was to be expected. The saline solution was doing its job.
The photos from the 10th and his eye looked
terrific. The wound had almost healed
over.
I had sent a series of photos to Dr Hamish Baron @ the Uni who
advised while the eye was looking good, he had probably damaged his tear duct
beyond repair and would most likely weep for the rest of his life.
Again this bird did something that defies belief. In the 3rd
week he came in with a small twig stuck in the wound. He let me remove it with
a pair of tweezers. WOW was all I could think.
Just like that.
After the 23rd he wouldn’t let me spray his eye again. While he still came in everyday, as soon as I produced the spray bottle he would fly off. His intention was pretty obvious.
Hamish was right, well sort of. These next couple of photos
were taken 6 months later, and as you can see, his eye is still weeping, but
not much.
What resilient, tough critters Kookaburras are.
Finally……………………How he got the wound was a bit of a mystery,
but if you’ve ever seen them grab a bug in the bushes they fly in face first. I’ve
sat on my veranda and watched & thought “what ungainly birds they are”. Out
the front I have a Lemon tree that has 2” thorns all over it. At certain times
it gets invaded by stink bugs. While I’ve never seen my Kookas feast on them,
boy, I can tell when they have when they come in to me for a feed at the end of
the day. They take my breath away. They stink. Just while we’re on that, you
may be thinking what does a Kookaburra normally smell like? Well it’s quite
sweet actually, a bit earthy but quite pleasant.Check out the video. It puts it all in context.
https://youtu.be/iFtIEZVDA5Q
BTW, as it turns out, he's a clumsy bastard. That wasn’t to be his only wound, but this last photo is for yet another story.
See you all
again soon with more stories & photos.
If you enjoyed this post, here's a link to my latest post;
https://bradsburras.blogspot.com/2021/05/cedrick-nasty-lorikeet.html
I'm happy that your Kookaburra is better now. I saw Kookaburra once in the animal veterinarian near me and I amazed when I see her in person. She is so lovely bird.
ReplyDeletewhat do you feed your birds?
ReplyDeletenever mind i found your other blog
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