I have a small 'Japanese White-eye' aka Mejiro

[Scotty]

Hi Guys,

Well one of my kids brought home from school someone gave at school they found a little baby Japanese White-eye aka Mejiro.

It's so tiny and cute, I tried to hand feed one of these I found a few years back but didn't make it, so I really want to tread lightly here and becareful and make this little guy live.

My kid calls it Pea, aka Little Pea...

I have the Kaytee Exact feeding formula and I was thinking the mother is only going to feed her babies a few times a day, even after I fed Pea today, a few hours later I see she is still going to the bathroom, but I noticed that a few times she bobs up and down like straining to go to the bathroom or this is normal? But nothing came out too... hmm I just want to make sure I don't over stuff her and she can't go to the bathroom and gets stuffed up...

Anyone ever have one of these or something just as small, how many times do you think is wise to feed? For the moment she seems hungry every 2 hours... And trying to watch a crop fill up, sheesh it's just one big puff ball so it's not easy for me to see this at the moment...

P.S. Pea came home yesterday after school so she made it through her first night of sleep which was like 7pm to 7am before she ate in the morning, boy this little thing sure slept, lol...

[JaydeParrot]

If there are vets or rspcas that will accept the bird, then that might be best, as raising the bird by hand may mean that it would be too dangerous to release it to the wild, and you would possibly end up needing to buy it a similar sized friend when it reaches adulthood to prevent it from being lonely for the rest of it's life.

That said, I had a baby finch that no one would take, I loved and fed it for three days until I accidently overfed it and it died (story can be found in a post of mine called death shriek). The general rule of thumb can be to gently put your hand under the neck and feel the crop, if it's kinda inflated and squishy the bird should be full enough. I found that I'd give a small feed, stop and the bird would make noise if it was hungry still.

Every two hours is quite normal, mine was almost ready to leave the nest and seemed to want food near every hour (it called out for a feed, had it's food and then slept until it wanted more food). I found it on the grass next to a fellow nestmate (who was dead), I was unable to leave it as it wasn't hiding and the cats in my neighbourhood would have killed it in no time.

Keep it in a warm box (I had a small plastic fish bowl with air vents) and put a towel at the bottom for the bird to lie on. Always leave the bird on it's feet/stomach, never leave it lying on it's back as that could affect it's ability to process it's food.

As long as it's going poop often, the head bobbing may just be it trying to properly swallow or digest it's food.

DO NOT let that bird get wet as it would die from a chill in no time, good luck with the bird, .

[Scotty]

It didn't make it, died the next day...

At times the bobing I was talking about was looking like straining to go to the bathroom.

Later the stool came out look like coffee and smelly like a chicken, so maybe it was sickly, not sure...

Oh well I tried my best...

thanks

[JaydeParrot]

It's sad, but baby birds (especially wild) are incredibly hard to take care of, also, if it fell out of it's nest it may have been too shocked or hurt to recover. At least it spent it's last day with someone who was really trying to keep it healthy.