gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) (11/17/89)
In article <1557@intercon.com> ooblick@intercon.com (Mikki Barry) writes: > > >(text about bird rehab. deleted) > > >It's actually a wonder that this person with the cardinals got them to >survive. I'm told that cardinals, sparrows, robins, etc. are among the >most difficult to deal with because they are so fragile. Mockingbirds, on >the other hand, are VERY tough :-) Actually my experience has been quite the opposite. In our lab we do foraging experiments with finches. I've worked with dark-eyed and yellow-eyed juncos, song sparrows and white-throats. All of these birds actually do quite well considering that they do endure a fair amount of handling when being netted, banded and so on. Once they are put into their cages and have a few days to settle down and get acclimated they get along very well [they even occasionally behave the way we predict they should !!! :*) ]. Of course, this does not mean I endorse the idea of capturing native birds for use as pets; we have state and federal scientific collecting permits which allow us to net birds. I couldn't comment on the responses of these or other birds while being rehabilitated since I've never been involved in that kind of activity. As an aside: This group really is my favorite to read, partly because I enjoy birds and birding and partly because the atmosphere on this group is generally quite nice. The bordering-on-flame-level intensity of a few persons regarding the interminable birding-versus-cage-bird debate has been a bit out of character for this forum. Personally, I have no problem reading some cage-bird posts along with the birding info. I know people who are actually into both (seems hard to believe, doesn't it??). I don't keep pet birds myself, but if you want to talk about fish/herp keeping I can get into that [alas, we don't get alt.aquaria on our system 8^( ]. Bye for now... Gregg ******************************************************************************* "In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real dead frog!!" -- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division *******************************************************************************