Saving Salisbury's wildlife

I TRIED to ignore the pigeon drooping in the baking heat on my neighbour Mike’s patio.

Hunched and pathetic, it sat there for hours on end, barely stirring on the first really hot day of this so-called summer.

We’ve had landscape gardeners in, extending our own patio, and by midway through the  afternoon they, like me, were tiptoeing over to the fence to keep an eye on the poor little thing.

Coincidentally, I’d been watching a pair of pigeons nesting in Mike’s honeysuckle for a few weeks (whilst trying not to appear as if I was training my binoculars through his bedroom windows).

The female had seemed to be sitting on eggs, and my first, mistaken assumption was that this was a youngster that had tumbled out.

We tried tempting it with birdseed and breadcrumbs and it made a half-hearted attempt to peck. We put down a dish of water but it wasn’t drinking.

In the end I could stand it no longer and rang Creatures In Crisis, previously known as Wiltshire Wildlife Rescue.

Would I mind trying to catch the pigeon, asked their full-time volunteer Kevin, while he finished cooking the family dinner. Then he would take care of it.

So there I was, distracting the bird by inching my way across its line of vision while Ian from over the road, a keen angler, crept up behind it with his landing net.

And bingo! We got it first time, popped it in a shoebox, and took it across town to Kevin, who answered the door with a young jackdaw tucked under one arm, its beak wide open as it anticipated its next mouthful of food.

What a wonderful organisation this is, I thought. Thank goodness it’s there when we need it.

I’ve called it a couple of times before – once for an injured bat on my front path (it later died), and once to remove a panic-stricken pied wagtail from the Bishop Wordsworth’s School kitchen, where I was helping to serve refreshments at a parents’ evening.

If only the mums and dads sipping tea and nibbling biscuits as they waited to talk to the teachers had realised what a chase was going on behind the serving hatch!

Sadly the pigeon turned out to have a head injury and it only lived for a couple of days. But I know I left it in the best possible hands.

The team at Creatures in Crisis deserve our admiration and thanks. Their job is sometimes pretty grim. And if anyone feels moved to offer them help, either practical or financial, I know they’d appreciate it. Just email creaturesincrisis@live.com.