Amber - The Kestrel
Amber
has a very sad story.
She was stolen from the nest she shared with her parents by two young
children, they took her home and reared her as a pet, she lived in
a canary cage and was fed for the first year of her life on dog food.
Because of the diet and the husbandry conditions she lived in this
resulted in her not actually growing to the size that she should have
matured to, she is in fact a kestrel's head smaller than what she
should be.
She came to live at Secret World from us receiving a call from the
RSPCA, they reported that they had found, what looked like a Kestrel
in a tree, it looked very depressed, wind blown with feather damage
and very emaciated.
Our centre manager responded to the call. Upon arriving at the scent
he was also confronted with the same sorry picture. The next task
was to somehow get her down from the tree! The Centre Manager thought
that it would be worth a try and see if she would come down to a glove
being held out at arms length, this could work as he thought if she
was a captive-bred bird of prey she may respond to a glove.
This worked perfectly, she must have been so hungry that she flew
down out of the tree and straight onto the glove rescued at
last!
She was brought back to Secret World where she underwent veterinary
inspection and was found to be very emaciated with considerable feather
damage, particularly to her tail feathers.
After months of care and attention given to her here at Secret World
she made a full recovery and is now fighting fit and attends various
school/college talks and goes along to Clarks Village to help educate
the general public that wild animals belong in the wild.
There are also other resident animals at Secret World, come and meet
them on our next open day:
Tortoises, terrapins, friendly ferrets, goats, geese, ducks, chickens,
pot-bellied pig Wilba, mink, harvest mice, slow worms, giant
African land-snails, African grey parrot, peacocks, guinea fowl, squirrels
and Amber the Kestrel..