Making my way home from work today, I saw an injured bird in the car park. I had noticed it earlier on in the morning, but just dismissed it. As it had been there all day though, it was obvious it’s wing was injured, so thought I had better help in some way.

I returned to the office and recruited a colleague to help me in capturing the bird. The plan being for me to take it home in a photocopying paper box and nurse it back to health.

Getting anywhere near the poor creature proved troublesome. For an injured bird, it was certainly able to run fast and hide underneath parked cars. After much effort, we decided to give up.

As we admitted defeat and begun to make our way back, the bird leapt out from under a parked car and flew into a nearby tree. Obviously it was less injured than we first thought – or we scared it into flying! Either way, I was left happy that it was back in the safety of a tree and not left on the floor as a tasty ready meal for a cat.

On our return to the office, we decided to be mean, and play a trick on Sam, who had been left behind to man the fort while we went out bird catching. My colleague recorded bird sounds into my mobile phone, which I then placed into the paper box. When Sam inspected the closed box, high-pitched bird song was emitted from inside. We had him fooled for all of 30 seconds until he realised it was simply a mobile phone!

* I say Starling, I think it may be a Thrush. Putting “Stop The Thrush” as a blog title may have lead to many misunderstandings though!