#bulbulbirds #redventedbulbul
We rescued ‘Chirpy’ on the 20th of June 2020. We spotted her hopping her way towards my feet. It was right after sunset near my neighbourhood. We tried but couldn’t locate her nest nearby, and so we brought her home for the night.
We couldn’t tell what kind of a bird was she. She was so tiny! We started feeding her every 1 to 2 hours. Tiring at first but then got used to it.
Everyday she stood right next to me like a shadow. I used to place her on a safe spot from where she could watch me prepare lunch. Every time I chopped colourful veggies she squeaked. I gave her tiny pieces and she gladly relished them. She tried tomatoes, cucumber, jalapeno, peach, apple, beans, spinach, curd and what not. Sooner I realised she loved everything sweet. Her favourite is kaju barfi 😂.
For the first week, I made her a home in my shoe box covered with soft towels (thinking she would fly within a week and leave us). After two weeks, I shifted her to a DIY shelter made of empty carton box, kitchen towel, chopsticks and painted trees and flowers inside.
It was only after sunset that we placed her in her shelter for a comfortable sleep. She had the habit of jumping out of the carton box. One day we lost her amidst our shoes and other packed items as there were many boxes lying on the floor...We were also packing our stuffs to shift to a new house. Found her cozy inside one of our shoe. Phew!!!Lockdown and work from home had made it possible to look after her.
In 3 weeks I noticed the bristle like hair on top of her head. They get raised up and down depending on what she is feeling. It became much easier to find out Chirpy is a Bulbul😄
After a month, chirpy started preening. And she started to bath every single day. (She enjoys her bathing ritual even today). It made more sense to keep her in the sun for sometime. We tried to take her out on our shoulder but crows and kites spotted her and started to gather near us. A cage seemed more safer for her to get out. I stood next to her whenever she was out in the open. Just once I went inside for less than a minute and a Kite started attacking chirpy. I rescued her only to find her scared to death. Fortunately, she was inside her cage.
There’s not much info on how to raise a Bulbul. In some random articles, whatever little info I could gather suggested to feed live worms. Luckily, amazon India has some really good bird foods. Bought a couple of them. Chirpy loved the live worms but she refused to eat other foods like seeds. She got accustomed to eating only cooked food and fresh fruits. I usually buy the bottle containing 200 live worms which gets over in 15-20 days. Till date, I have bought 8 bottles.
She is very intelligent, curious, and a really good observant. She surprises us with a variety of things. Be it imitating her name or making sound just like the ringer of our phone or poking the container with her beak whenever she wants to eat those worms. She knows exactly which box contains chocolates and biscuits and nuts. She is fond of them all. She has both sweet and annoying voice. She uses her sweet voice most of the times. We get to see her angry, happy, sad, scared, playful expressions all the time and it thrills us to see her display all those emotions effortlessly. These days it is not possible to record her activities...she comes flying to me whenever she sees me holding my phone...Being the curious one she wants to watch what’s there on the screen. She enjoys videos that comes with an upbeat music.
Fortunately, our new house has all glass doors and windows. It allows us to get light without opening any of the doors or windows. Now that it is winter, Chirpy wakes up at 9.30 am and sleeps at 6pm. (Yes! It’s shocking for a bird to get up so late🤣). In between she gets all the space to fly from one end of the house to the other end. We as humans have learned to adjust to her safety by not opening any of the doors accidentally without checking with her whereabouts😂. Our new neighbourhood is filled with Birds of prey!
2 and a half months later, I spotted red feathers under her tail. She is a Red-Vented Bulbul! And few weeks later, she started with the most beautiful dance. Usually in the kingdom of birds, the male birds are more attractive, and performs unique movements to attract a female. Well, there are so many questions that I have regarding Chirpy. Now that she is 7 months old and google says the life span of a Bulbul is 11 years, I need to figure out ways to keep her safe, make arrangements where she could find her folks and meet a mate. But most importantly, be 101% sure of her survival in the wild as she is completely domesticated now. A visit to an Ornithologist is the first step for now.
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🙏Thank you for watching the video and going through this long description. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any inputs or suggestions regarding Bulbuls.
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