Caring For A Baby Bird(owl In This Matter)

[Zeid]

makes sure when the bird grows eats carcass bones and feather to clean her stomach, some eat mud.

i had common buzzards, i used to give them living chicken chiks to clean them up, but quail was great

[Goshawk]

very depressing reading...

" On Sunday 16th March 2008 the illegal trade in wildlife was once again in full swing at Chatuchak Market. The pet section of the market has moved further around the back since my last visit and is now a little harder to stumble across - perhaps this has been done on purpose so that fewer foreigners come across these illegal activities and report them?

The trade in small squirrels has grown over the years and now there are a large number of vendors offering these poor unfortunate creatures for sale; typically they are tethered to their cages or owners by less than 1 foot of string or enclosed in a tiny cage with barely enough room to turn around. There were far too many of these animals to count but a sensible estimate would be around 250-300 squirrels for sale across the market.

Other wildlife that was openly offered for sale included reptiles, amphibians and birds.

A brief count of all the native bird species that were obviously illegally obtained and for sale was taken:

Brown Hawk Owl - 2

Spotted Owlet - 13 juveniles across 4 different shops

Asian Barred Owlet - 1

Collared Scops Owl - 1 adult 2 juv

Hill Myna - 3 nestlings

Red-breasted Parakeet - 1 nestling

Scarlet Minivet - 1 female

Golden-fronted Leafbird - 3

White-rumped Shama - 3 males

Red-whiskered Bulbul - too many to count

Asian Koel - 1 nestling

Silver-eared Mesia - 3

Black-throated Laughingthrush - 1

Raptor sp. (Probably a Hawk Eagle) - 1 juvenile

This list illustrates that the illegal trade in birds is as bad, if not worse, than ever at Chatuchak Market.

It is also obviously widely known that these activities are illegal as virtually all the vendors offering these species for sale had signs in Thai and English that said "No Photos" - vendors who were dealing in legal and captive-bred creatures did not display these signs. " - Nick Upton from Thaibirding.com

He's OK is Nick, one of the most knowledgable guys on the birds of Thailand i know & you can read the article and see some photo's he took at chatuchack here on his own site..

[burman]

Strange really, I assumed the squirrels were captive bred and not illegal.

I saw some kind of jungle cat down there a few months ago.

[philipm]

hey mate,

i to have had owls,

the small ones you would usually get is the athene brama (spotted owlete) and their is another, which looks more like a small forest owl...If u have a pic i could help identify it.

As Shu said, do not force feed the owl water, nor bathe him. intime if you leave a large enough bowl of warm water, it will by it self come, and bathe itself. dont expect them to shower everyday though...more like once a few weeks.

FOOD is vital to them, usually a mice that has been gutted (they dont eat guts so they will just rippe them apart all over the area),, worms (bug worms) you can also buy them at JJ, raw FRESHHHHHHHHHHHH meat (beef or pork) warmly diced, but not to small.

if your owl claws have been cliped slightly, then putting them on your hand and trying to wiggle the food infront of them, (wear a glove) they will in time understand its food. btw if you have a bell, ring the bell everytime it see/eats the food, that way you can train the owl to come to you when you want to feed it. this will take months and persistence to achieve, if your looking for that, that is.

i hand bare feed mine the worms, and the meat, after the first few bites and experimenting, she understood that my fingers were out of bounds! and they polietly eat of your finger. (if hand feeding does not work, then leave it in a bowl she can reach)

Take loving care of the owl, they get very attached, on many occasisons owls are known to not eat, or cry if their owner (theirs parents) is not their. thus they can starve to death if you just deside to go on a long hoilday without any concideration to the owl.

Make sure you surround the area of her living space with alot of tress (plants) they love to bound to things and they are wild, and need their environment to be mimiced if you want them to live beyond a few weeks and months. Please dont keep them in a cage, if you can build or just surround an area with plants and stuff and just get some cage mesh and just cover a decent portion of space. *(THEY WILL DIE IF THEY ARE IN THE CAGE FOR DAYS ON END)

beside all this, i will tell you, i loved them so much, took very good care of them, but in the end the owl died, and since then, owls are a nono to me, untill a point where i can provide the best environment, space, time, food, love for it. either way mate, i hope you get to hand feed them, its an unreal experince...(ITS A FREAKING MINI OWL IN YOUR HOUSE) !!!

[BangkokBP]

For anyone keeping an owl, I can highly recommend the book "Understanding Owls" written by Jemima Perry-Jones, a world renowned and recognized authority on raptors who also owns and runs The International Centre for Birds of Prey in Newent, Gloucestershire, UK. Its available from the major online bookshops.

She has been very kind and helpful answering questions by email, and probably knows more than anyone else about raptors.

While I agree that buying wild captured birds is irresponsible and feeds the demand for illegal wildlife trade, there is another aspect on this; the trade will not go away without people being educated, especially not here in Thailand as corruption is rife and there is big money in the trade, so may I suggest that a different approach would be to get people interested in keeping Raptors (and other wildlife when possible) and domesticate and breed birds and make the offspring legally available on the market. The benefits are many and it would reduce the load on the wildlife.

Thank you to to Burman and CMSally for the links, good sites.

Cheers,

BBP

[Ibizabreeze]

Contact the Wildlife Friends of Thailand.They will help you or your little friend ..morelike.

Poor thing needs to get back to the wild...its not a domestic animal,it was stolen from the wild, help it get back there fast!

www.wfft.org