The story of the song thrush chicks, part two

Although we were saddened by the loss of one chick on Monday morning, it wasn't unexpected, and by the evening we were encouraged by one of the remaining two making controlled hops up to the perches in the cage. While the cats were out, we let the two of them out of the cage so that they could exercise their wings more fully, and we got - well, a bit of gliding and a scrambled finish - certainly better than a drop to the floor.

By Tuesday we were noticing changes in the pair of them. Tail feathers were under way, and their calling had changed from a raucous "feed me!" to something definitely musical. They still weren't keen on mealworms, though. We stopped covering the cage overnight so that they would be in tune with the natural light cycles.

They got the idea of mealworms on Wednesday, although they had to be fed with tweezers; the little dish of them we left in the cage went untouched. We now had a definite "lift and land" onto the perches and, when they were out of the cage, something more like a flight than the previous day. We were trying to touch them as little as possible, which meant leaving them to see if they could sort themselves out when a landing didn't go quite as planned, and they didn't do too badly.

Thursday, however, was almost a disaster. Both cats were upstairs, so we let the birds out. One was now picking his spot, flying directly to it, and only crashing a little bit on landing. Which was when Luc head the very slight sound of the bell on a cat's collar; Dyson had crept downstairs, and was just half an inch from the more advanced chick when Luc rescued him. Later that night, the two of them started helping themselves to mealworms from the dish.

Friday came, and we took the dish out of the cage - leaving the mealworms so the chicks would have to search for them a bit more. Having made sure both cats were definitely out, we went onto flying again; one was now in full control, and found himself a safe spot up high to rest and start to go to sleep - getting quite aggressive when Luc tried to get him down. We were heartened that he wasn't tame, in fact he backed off calling an alarm signal. The other wasn't flying too badly either - just a day or so behind in his progress.

We had planned to release them on Saturday, but there were high winds and we weren't sure how they would cope, so it was Sunday that we carefully carried the cage out the the garden and selected a quiet area, with a selection of shrubs and trees. The birds went quiet during the walk; there was still a slight wind, which they must have felt, and there was also other birdsong. We set the cage down on a table, and opened the door - and for the first time in days there wasn't a rush to get out.

We lifted the more developed chick out and put him on the edge of the cage; he promptly hopped back in. Had we left it too long? We got him out again. He flew .... about eight feet, and landed on the ground. We heard more bird song, this time including a song thrush, from nearby.

His second flight took him into a holly bush, where he settled and started calling.

After both birds were gone we waited for a while, just in case we had a returner, but we didn't.

Later that afternoon I took a walk round the garden; no chicks struggling on the ground, which was good news. As I approached the holly bush I said "Tweet" and got a little burst of song back.

That was now two weeks ago. We have no idea how our young birds fared, but they were capable of feeding themselves, flight and safe landings, and were wary of humans, so we like to think they made the transition back to the wild. If nothing else, we gave them a chance which they didn't have when we first found them.