New year, new bird!

I was washing one of the Alice's tiles (I put them into the freezer and then into her box so she can lie on it and keep cool during these hot spells, she has such a thick white coat, poor snow rabbit!) outside in the 40' heat today, and I heard a rustling on the groundleaves below one of our mandarin trees. I thought nothing of it, and was about to go inside, but the rustling again sounded significant, and when I looked over, was that something brownish? Maybe it was another hopping mouse? We've seen two over the last year, skipping along the bricks, and they're cute little things with tufts at the end of their tail, and hind legs like little kangaroos.

On closer look, I discovered a tiny, baby bird, a native Brown Honeyeater *edit 12Jan* correction:  Singing Honeyeater. It was struggling around the dried leave on the ground, and had ants crawling on it, and it was 40' midday! I spied a thin looking nest up above in the mandarin tree. My mum found a dead baby bird a few days ago here. That fact, plus the bad gusty winds we've had every night for the past week...I was not going to try and put the baby bird back into the thin looking nest, only to have it fall out again, and we find another dead baby bird.

So that's how I've come to have a baby honeyeater in a makeshift material nest in a tupperware box by my side that I've been feeding raw sugar water. I must say, the baby bird does not look very good, I really hope it lives. It is so fluffy and fragile....I really hope it lives. I will go down to the small, exotic, animals vet shop tomorrow and get some of that Wombaroo bird mix I read about on this great blog post by Kirsty Brooks, a heartfelt Adelaide writer and animal lover, (who also has many finches and even a story about a couple that brought a tear to my eye).