Rescued on the side of the road, this lil’ Sootball of Love® (Is it a raven?) will be released as soon as he can take off. He’s gotta grow into those feet, yo!
Thanks, Jaxon S. and your Fine Flickr Fotos.
Nevermore!
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Gaakkaawwugga FUZZY.
I want to rub it against my cheek.
birds have such cool eyelids — almost bejewelled. great pic.
[cheepy little voice]
I are OMEN! You is come to CWOSSWOADS! Now you de-CIIIDE!
[snicker] “Quit the bust above my door”
Poewned!
OK, I’m done.
he reminds me of Puss in Boots from Shrek 2. the part where hes purring and has big pretty eyes all adorable and then you all “awwwwwww!” and then you get a royal butt kicking
And I thought ravens couldn’t be cute. Boy, did you prove me wrong!
theo. more. pls.
i’ve never seen a fluffy crow before! ^_^
I think this qualifies for a cuteness trifecta.
*juicy eyes
*you havent grown into your feet yet
*inquisitive look
Ok maybe there should be some sort of cute rating for cuteness outside other than looks. For instance, this guy has to be the softest thing on earth. He gets tactile cute points as well visual cute points.
LOL @ Poewned!
“Nevewmowe!”
That is too cute! This site is a great for when life seems rough…you get to see a cute little picture of a soft fluffy birdie! Awesome!
Oh. my. GOD. This is the cutest thing I’ve EVER seen. I need more ravens, Meg! And DON’T say NEVERMORE! Oh, those itty-bitty wiiiings…
Cutest…omen…of…death…ever!
The ancients say when this guy appears, it portends that someone will die in a horrible snuggling accident.
Beuregard – He’s probably also the lightest thing on earth. Light and fluffy helps with the cute points because it helps with the vulnerable/fragile cute points. Aw shucks, I just want to stick it in my pocket and love it and hug it and kiss it foreEVER!
I just looked at his blog, and it seems the little bird has passed away.
So sad.
Wha?
So… nevermore for real??
oh no! that’s so sad that it passed away
it was SO cute. the cutest little fuzzball I’ve seen in a while.
Direct link to Jaxon S’s blog entry… I guess it was its own omen.
I don’t see anything on there about the bird dying.
well, whatever happened to the little guy, he sure is cute and fuzzy in the picture! Wow, I am always surprised at the cuteness factor of things I wouldn’t have thought could even be cute (see also: possum, baby)
gilz! That has to be the comment of the day. LOL!
Happy Bunny — try it this way:
http://mytravellingjack.blogspot.com/2006/02/little-bird-update.html
It’s not a raven, corvids don’t generally get all downy like that, I’ve seen my fair share of baby crows, and they look nothing like that. I added a link to a site with pictures of a baby raven. It is pretty doubtful that the bird was actually separated from it’s parents, even if baby birds fall from the nest, the parents still look after them. It would have been better to stick him back in the tree. From reading the blog it sounds like he was feeding it rice. Baby birds have very delicate systems, and the wrong food can do them in. in short: if you find a baby animal call a wildlife rescue/rehabilitation place before you do anything. Many well meaning people end up hurting more than helping. That bird probably didn’t have to die. Sorry for the downer rant, I work at a wildlife rehab center and I see this kind of thing too often.
lil Sootball, we hardly knew ya.
I second Katie B’s comments about baby wildlife. Odds are very good that little birds and critters don’t NEED your help. Babies often leave the nest when they look too young to us, but most of them are being watched over and fed by their parents, who know a lot better than we do how to raise a baby that knows how to survive. Most people try to feed bread and milk to a baby anything, which will at best give the little one terrific diarrhea. Contact your vet or state wildlife department to find a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. Keeping the kid is probably illegal, besides being bad for the kid. And while you’re at it, the rehabber would really appreciate a donation; the one I worked with had to close for lack of funding.
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/PUGA.jpg
It was probably a baby gallinule, or a similar water bird. You can still see the egg tooth on its beak, so I’d say it probably hatched earlier that day. The nest was probably nearby. -_-
Gah, people, express your sadness for the bitty fuzzbird and move on.
This ain’t the place for rants of that sort.
Sheesh.
Well… they do have a point, Skwerly. But I don’t want to see this degenerate into a flamewar any more than you do.
Hi Cute O, thanks for posting the little bird. I picked the little guy from the roadside of a busy highway. It was already dark at that time. I didn’t feed it with rice, i gave it banana, the closest of what i thought was animal food, but yeah, I agree with the comment that little birds and critters don’t NEED our help, because even the best intention kills.
what I should’ve done, i realised now, was to take the bird away from the busy highway… hide it in the bush nearby so that the parents could come back the next day to feed it. *sigh*
Jaxon, its okay. It was a learning experience. We all make mistakes, whether you taking it in was a mistake or not. Sorry you had to experience a death to such a young bird.
He was so sweet! If you like birds, you might want to try again with baby chickies. They are easy to care for and they eat simply, chicken feed. But mine like raisins also.
Blog starts here: http://mytravellingjack.blogspot.com/2006/02/soon-my-little-bird-soon.html
Sad to see it die.
that is soooooooo sad! it was so lil and bitty too. and fwuffy.
The reason that animals have multiple offspring is that sometimes, they just don’t make it. Don’t blame yourself – his utter cuteness warms my heart even though he was not long for the world. That may have been his purpose, and he fulfilled it admirably.
I absolutely adore the egg-tooth. That’s so dang cute.
–Elf
Oh, I love him!!!!! =D
Thanks so much, the raven is my totem animal.
Regardless of that, this little guy makes me happy just to be alive.
Fly on, my sweet angel,
Fly on to the sky,
Fly on, my sweet angel,
Tomorrow I’m gonna be by your side.
*pulls out hair* SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THAT’S SO @#$@$#% ADORABLE. I HAVE NO WORDS.
Awwwwwww …. black and fuzzy. Wanna nestle him against my cheek.
Many wild creatures will abandon or canabilize their young if there is something wrong with them, be it a genetic problem or something obvious like a birth defect or injury/illness. The safety of the group cannot be risked for one young. The baby bird may have had something wrong with it that we could not see, and the parents pushed it from the nest. That would explain why the parents were not trying to look after it. She only had the bird a little while, and an inappropriate diet may not have been what caused it’s passing. Not saying it wasn’t, just saying it may not have been.
It’s sad that this tiny one died, but the fact that it happened so quickly after being found makes me wonder if it wasn’t injured in the fall, or even snatched and injured by a predator removing it from the nest. It’s impossible to know, but your kindness may have been his only (slim) chance.
i bet it tastes like chicken …
Oh what a fuzzy buzz.
Katie B is correct, it is not a corvid, but a bird in the rail family: A White-breasted Waterhen.
These birds nest on the ground, thus there is no nest to fall from. The parent birds were likely active in their care, only temporarily frightened off by a human presence.
Very young birds, like this one, need food every half-hour to an hour from sunrise to sunset. Not unusual for it to have faded away so quickly.
White-breasted Waterhen chicks: http://orientalbirdimages.org/search.php?action=searchresult&Bird_ID=781
Raven simps: http://www.scottish-birds.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/raven.htm
Didn’t mean to sound like I was ragging on the person who tried to care for the bird– just giving info for future such findings of little critters. We learn from our mistakes, and those of others, and I’ve made them too.
The bird is surely NOT a raven.
More than likely, it’s a species of either rail, Sora or other wader-species, in which case its diet would have consisted of: fresh and salt-water mollusks, small shellfish, small fish, aquatic insects and the like (tadpoles, of course, too), not to mention its probable ingestion of aquatic plants.
Whoever told you it was a baby raven has NO idea what they are talking about: ravens are NOT born fully feathered, able to walk, or with eyes open (precocial). Ravens are born naked, eyes sealed shut, with grayish down, not all black.
Rails, soras and other species closely related to herons and egrets are born in nests made among reeds; finding it on the ground wouldn’t have been so unsual, especially if that roadside was near a marshy area and reeds. Your best bet for future reference, would have been to place the baby back in the reeds away from the road. Since these birds are precocial and can walk literally hours after birth (yes, that was an eggtooth on the bill; no, ravens don’t retain them when they are able to walk/hop around the nest at about three weeks of age; they drop off usually within days of hatching, sometimes hours), it more than likely got a bit lost.
It is also possible that it had been nabbed by a predator of some kind (mammalian, avian or other) and simply dropped near the roadside. Whatever the case, now the bird is dead and there is nothing you can do for it now.
HOWEVER, if you come across ANY baby that appears “abandoned” or somehow lost, check the surroundings very carefully to make sure its parents aren’t actually close by. Watch for bit from a safe distance (provided the baby is safe and not already injured, of course).
IF the parents do not return within an hour, then by all means, gently remove it, place it in a warm box, and give it space – then call a wildlife rehabilitator. You can find them by calling your local department of fish and game (fish and wildlife service) or through your local humane society, veterinarians, and sometimes, feedstores and other animals shelters. GOOD LUCK and now you are armed with good info!
Feather
very cute and intresting
Tina is correct, with a nice comment there. Cute Overload will often get the baby bird issue, I suspect, so please tolerate comments that protect the birds. People express good intentions, but fledglings to require precise and intense care, and only if an expert cannot put it back with its mother. BTW, in the case of ravens, families stay together in their favorite spot. And, as many birds mate for life, finding a wounded adult bird can have huge consequences. Consult the state-approved Wildlife Rehabiliators in your area. Don’t keep the animal. And no offense to our friend who tried to help the baby bird. As for rants, offers to help educate are not rants.
This looks very like a corncrake: see the gallery picture at
http://www.birdwatchireland.ie/bwi/pages092003/consvwork/projects/corncrakes.html
This bird is probably a rail. Most likely a Virginia Rail.
This picture made me laugh for 5 minutes. I can not explain myself why I became so happy !
If a baby bird is walking it probably did not fall out of a nest. It was born on the ground and lives on the ground and should be left on the ground. Birds that are born in trees are terrible walkers when they are chicks.
Fuzzy wuzzy!
I volunteer at a Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, and LOVE it. Not with birds, but in the mammal nursery (mostly bunnies and baby squirrels). I wish more people would consider this kind of volunteer work.
OMG soooo cute!!! I want one!!! its sooo fuzzy and cudley aww!!
*eyes bleed* Oh it’s so lovely and cute. Ravens are very very smart birds
I hate to burst your bubble but I’m pretty sure that is a baby chicken…NOT a raven.
This is a raven.
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k12/Aislan/babyraven.jpg
Not so cute.
It’s a sora.
Definately not a raven. I imagine some sort of ground bird, one that probably lives near water. Too fluffy to be a raven. As tree-nesting birds, ravens dtay bald and blind and featherless until a couple weeks into life, and they’re never quite this small. All in all, this thing’s much more adorable than any raven ever was. So wonderfully fluffy.
Here’s a picture of a baby raven, if you’re curious: http://www.fin2feather.com/birding/photos/images/baby-ravens.jpg
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