This pigeon wasn’t planned. My uncle brought it to us after finding it had fallen out of a really badly-built nest (pigeon nests are often a bit rubbish for the first few years), which he wouldn’t have known about if a buzzard hadn’t flown past him with this pigeon’s sibling in its talons.

So, we have an orphaned, sibling-less pigeon chick… and he looks ridiculous. He seems to have a spoonbill, little whiskers at the end of his baby feathers and he makes this high pitched squeak which I can only assume means “MORE FOOD!”

So far, he’s been eating mushed up, water-soaked chick crumbs and crushed peas. We’ve made him a ‘nest’ in the pet carrier, which has the handy advantage that it acts as a cat deterrent (whenever the cats see the carrier they think we’re going to take them to the vets and miraculously run and hide) and he seems quite happy. Hopefully he’ll grow to be independent enough that we can release him back in to the wild.

He doesn’t really have a name, but we call him ‘Pidge’. It might be unoriginal but he doesn’t seem to care. x