The hiker quickly realized that this must be some baby bird that had perhaps blown out of a nearby nest. He tried to locate the family of the tiny “cotton dot” in the hope that they might want to take it back. Finding no nest, the rescuer decided to take the little bird to Bonorong Sanctuary. – The rescuer was unable to find his parents or the nest, so he brought the bird to us, says a representative of the animal protection center to The Dodo. The bird, which has been named “Pod”, was fed and measured at the centre. He weighed just over 20 grams. It turned out to be a relatively recent addition to the Australian frogmouth herd. According to Store norske lexikon, this is a bird that belongs to the night owls.
The bird species is native to Southeast Asia and Australia. As the Dodo writes, frogs’ mouths are often mistaken for owls. They have big heads, are active at night, and when they grow up they are brown in colour. Little Pod will stay at the animal welfare center and receive care until he is big enough to manage in nature on his own. Here at home in Norway, you will hardly find an Australian frog’s mouth. But Fuglehjelpen constantly receives a number of inquiries from people who find small baby birds. They say that for many species it is natural and correct to leave the nest before flight is achieved. “People often pick up baby birds in their eagerness to help. In such cases, the bird should be placed back where it was found as soon as possible, so that the parents can feed it,” says Fuglehjelpen on its website. They also debunk the myth that bird parents will not take in a young that has been touched by human hands. But they ask people urgently not to bring baby birds home – other than after consultation with Fuglehjelpen! Chicks are in the nest/feeding stage for two to three weeks. Then they eventually become capable of flying, but are still fed, in whole or in part, for a time by the parents before they become independent.