On a July day in 2018, I was walking to my car in the second basement garage of our apartments when I heard the loud singular chirp of what I assumed to be a bird. Not giving it much thought, I continued on my way.
But when I heard the same sounds the next day, I resolved to investigate. I followed them and found a walnut sized ball of fluff on the floor near the entrance to the building. I went up and told Micha, who loves this kind of stuff. She told me to get a box and go down and bring it up.
When I got back down to the garage, it was still there, but when I went to catch it, half of it awkwardly “flew” away. It turns out the little ball of fluff was two baby birds huddled together. I was able to capture the one that stayed behind, but the other was more elusive. With Micha’s help though we finally got it and took them upstairs to put them in a cage we’d had from a bird some years back. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the birds were so young that the stronger of the two was able to squeeze right between the bars of the cage, and I had to rush to a nearby hardware store to buy screen to surround the cage until the birds would be large enough to stay put.
We had no idea what kind of bird they were until our son Jack suggested the Vinous-throated Parrotbill (and that’s the closest I could find through all of my searches). We looked into how to care for them, and found out that we could feed them dog food soaked in water and cut into small pieces, so Micha started feeding them with the intention of releasing them once they got big enough. One of the problems though was we had no idea where they came from. I searched the garage and found no signs of a nest or mother or any birds whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how one bird could have even gotten down two flights of steps to the second basement, let alone two – especially since they couldn’t really fly.
Sadly, the bird that didn’t fly away when we caught them was weak or injured, and within the week died. The feisty one survived, and Micha took to calling her 삐삐 (pronounced “bbee-bbee” where the “b” sound is more aspirated at the lips), which kind of fits with the Korean propensity for onomatopoeia. Bbee-bbee is the sound she (no idea – I’ll say “he” or “she” interchangeably, but have settle on “she” most of the time) would make sometimes (we’ve identified many different sounds by now). And believe it or not, she kind of responds when you call her that. If she’s somewhere around the house and we can’t find her, we just call her name and she’ll give us a chirp. And if someone’s in the kitchen, she’ll come over to say “hi.” She has free run of the house, but mainly just hangs out around her cage and behind the TV.
Another problem we’ve encountered is that 삐삐has a habit of dropping her feathers, and for nearly half the time we’ve had her, she’s been unable to fly. She still gets around by hopping though, but I really like it when she grows her feathers out and she can fly around the house. Then she’ll come to visit us at the table while we’re eating (and beg for rice). I think she loses her feathers because she’s just not made for living in a cage, even though we let her roam free. We can’t be sure about her diet, but try our best. She eats dry meal-worms, and fresh grubs and bugs in the fall when Micha goes out picking up acorns and chestnuts. She still gets soaked dog food, but we add a vitamin to the water. We’ve also trained our dog not to eat her, which is quite the accomplishment considering she chases birds if they get too close or aren’t paying attention when we’re out on walks.
삐삐 has really become part of the family, and brings us a lot of joy. I really wish we could’ve gotten her well and back out in the wild, but it didn’t work out that way. By the time she was grown and seemed healthy enough, it was winter. By the end of the winter, she’d lost her flight feathers. It was a cycle that I felt she just couldn’t survive, and so here we are. I have no idea how much longer she’ll live – I mean, so far, so good. But we’ll do our best. She’s probably living a better life than she would’ve out in the wild, but taking her chances out there wouldn’t have been a bad thing either. Vinous-throated Parrotbills are a social bird.
I got the idea to write this because she’s got her flight feathers back now after several months without. They’re not fully grown out – her tail is only about a third as long as it should get soon – but they’re enough that she can fly around the house again and visit Micha in the kitchen while she’s cooking. It can be a little distracting when I’m sitting with my computer and she buzzes in front of me on her way to her cage. She gets around a lot now, and settles down well once the sun goes down. Her cage is a quiet little refuge that we leave open all day and only close and cover at night so she can sleep undisturbed.
There are a lot of tradeoffs here, but I hope that she doesn’t mind her part of the bargain. From our side, we’ll do our best for her in any case.
❤️