We’re looking after a tawny frogmouth (yes, looks like a Furby so now he’s called Furby and, no, he is NOT an owl, they are related to Nightjars, not owls) this Christmas after it fell from a nest and was hand raised by my friend. The rescue services she called said they had too many so with the arrival of Furby we had to learn fast.

He’s in our 30 ft long, 10 foot high, 12 foot wide very natural tree enclosure (we grow fruit trees as otherwise we get no fruit due to possums and cockatoos… we also have other trees here for the possums and birds).

He’s learning how to feed himself (slowly). He’s carnivorous so its been an adventure to learn to feed him… scrounging for any live food, gathering snails… live worms (sorry worms), crickets and, yes, cockroaches (eeeek)… ended up buying them from pet stores at $8 per tub of 12! And of course its not emotionally easy for all of us to feed something live to keep something else alive.

So now we’re breeding worms etc to feed this hungry furby… can’t wait till he’s independent and can leave the enclosure and fly away, away, somewhere else, and go find his own food and let us get over the guilt. But we felt he’d never learn to fly and forage and drink independently unless he saw a bird do it.

So then came Captain Corelli (yes named after the film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) ,a short billed, captive-bred Corella, seed eating, foraging, self feeding vegetarian who is 1 year old but would live to 40 in a pet shop cage about 1 metre square (yukko). So when I learned this Corella might enjoy the relative freedom of a 30 foot enclosure to fly in I paid his $95 freedom fee to the pet shop and took him to meet the Furby (apparently the corella wouldn’t survive in the wild as it was raised in captivity, but I’m keeping an open mind).

They liked each other… or I imagine they did. Furby was quite entertained watching a flying bird and Captain was amused by Furby. Soon Furby was foraging for Corelli’s food pellets (self feeding, hooray!) which I extended to pursuing cockroaches (self feeding, hooray) and he flew everywhere Captain Corelli had been, trying out everything Corelli was doing (really cool). Of course Corelli is a seed eater, a vegetarian, and Furby is a carnivore, Corelli slept at night, Furby was meant to sleep by day and eat by night so their futures would lead them in different directions.

Whilst we were wrongly told Furby would actually eat Corelli (not true, Frogmouths eat insects, worms, snails, mice and very SMALL birds… its OWLS that will eat a bird their own size or bigger and Frogmouths grab food with their softish beak, not with talons, as owls do). We were told Corelli would sense Furby was a dangerous carnivore and be terrified…. no way, they sat side by side, Furby and his adoptive mother Corelli.
Then came the news we had to feed Furby mice…. $2 each, four a day (yes, this brought great guilt as to why I wasn’t sending this money to disaster relief instead) and we had to cut these thawed mice up to feed to him, later tie cotton around the body parts and drag them along to have him ‘catch’ them. It wasn’t pleasant… little frozen expressions of all kinds, just as they’d been when frozen to death, and then feeding the decapitated head to Furby… I felt like I was a serial killer. And next he was meant to graduate to live ones (I didn’t know if I could do that but I didn’t think I could feed live cockroaches to a frogmouth either).
So Christmas for us this year is one of nature and responsibilities but hopefully new year for the frogmouth will be independence.

As for Captain Corelli, who knows, he may prove himself ready for freedom too.

Donna Williams
www.donnawilliams.netps:

Update December 2006.

Healesville Animal Sanctuary – wonderful place, go visit – took Furby and he’ll have a happy bush home there (phew, no more tying up mouse body parts and dragging them along with cotton, no more handling live cockroaches late at night by torchlight to try and train Furby to feed nocturnally…oh my grateful eyeballs).

As for Corelli, he missed Furby for a few days (Furby had copied everything Corelli did so now Corelli called to the skies for a new student… gathered a few cockatoos and danced for them – quite a funny parrot is Corelli.

Anyway, Corelli is learning who is friend (cockatoos) who is foe (magpies) how to use trees to get out of too much sunshine and torrential downpours (all the things he’s never known) but there are some signs yet he needs more experience with weather and wild birds to really know what to do in ‘the outside world’. In the meantime, he seems to be enjoying himself.

Latest Update 5th January 2007

Well, Captain Corelli decided, after all to go fly with his friends, the cockatoos. It must really have been something flying up into a vast sky into gum trees 80 foot tall. He sat up a gum tree calling to the world and flew, or really soared, from tree to tree. Freedom looked good up there. Then, after we’d seen him he simply went further. He’s probably gone to find the other corellas, and they’re not too far from here in any case, about 5 mins as the crow flies 😉 at a place called Grant’s Picnic Ground where the public come by the bus load to feed corellas and cockatoos and a creek flows year round with fresh water.

I miss him. But I’m glad for him.

Happy New Year Captain.

Love from your old family,

Donna and Chris.

http://www.donnawilliams.net

here’s some wonderful stories of parrots

http://www.juliusbergh.com/cocky/friends.html