Ron's blog

Over the past few weeks our various baby birds have been gaining confidence and getting to know us better. At first when they come, they follow their parents around for food, then they try a bit for themselves, picking it up off the grass experimentally. (They have surprising difficulty when very young picking up their own food, even though they have already become accomplished fliers.)

Last Friday I was taking a water can up to the front gate to change the water in the bowl up there. Maggie was behind me pottering around. Suddenly I saw him running past me to beat me to the water bowl, getting there while I was still about six feet away, and then he stood facing me and drinking water. I had a nice chat with him, but the meaning of this action came home to me forcefully while I was walking back from the gate. He was trying to tell me that there was already water in the bowl and I didn't have to lug the big water can all that way.

Fresh back from a Christmas trip to India, we were keen to see how our birds' new offspring had managed to pull through.

There is a beautiful thing about animals that I am sure readers who have the privilege to observe wild animals closely and make friendships with them will have also observed: we give them little things like food, that cost us next to nothing, for a long time they will they have no chance to give anything back; but when they do get that chance, they give everything they have.

When Gitie and I set up WingedHearts.org, we wanted to keep everything positive, and try to work with those of you who also love animals as much as we do, to inspire others who haven't 'got it' yet, with our true stories of bird intelligence, emotion, and love. But an article in Maggie Wright's latest newsletter cannot be ingored, sad and negative though the subject is. (Maggie runs the maggiewright.net "See Animals Through Your Heart" site.) I cannot add anything to her words without losing my cool, so I simply reprint her article below: