Found injured canary

[four.kitties]

Hello,

This is long, sorry.

Today I found (what I believe to be) a bright yellow canary hopping around the parking lot behind my house. All yellow with a bit of white on the wings and tail. About the size and shape of a sparrow. Not only did he not look like a wild bird but he didn't act like one either (repeatedly hopping towards me and then away, trying to get in the window). My brother and I tried to catch him but he flew away. Not long after I got worried about him because there are several stray cats around so I went looking for him. He was sitting quietly in the snow but flew away and tried to get into another window when I approached. I managed to catch him by throwing a shirt over him and carried him home. Then I noticed a few drops of blood on his feathers and a wound on the side of his neck. I took him to the vet but she admitted she does not know much about birds. She cleaned the wound and gave him an oral dose of antibiotics (clindamycin hydrochloride). The thing is, I'm supposed to repeat the dose every eight hours. But he gets very agitated if I even put my arm in the cage to give him food. I don't want to scare him into having a heart attack or something, and I don't trust myself to handle him as I have zero experience with birds. So I ask anyone who might know more about this than I, should I try to give him the meds as prescribed or leave him to heal on his own? I have him in a cat carrier right now and he seems quite content to hop and fly around in there. I gave him a teaspoon of canary seeds and he ate a good amount of it. The wound is not bleeding and he seems okay, but like I said, I am not familiar with birds. It has been about four hours since I got him home. I want to save this little guy, so any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[RavensGryf]

Lucky little guy that you found him! IMHO, the vet gave antibiotics as a precaution against infection, not that it was already infected. If it were me, and he seemed well enough that he's hopping and flying to get away from you if you get too close (as canaries usually do), I'd just keep watch over him and let him heal with time. Maybe he had a near miss with an animal. Hope it doesn't get infected. It's your call though if you do want to catch him every 8 hours. Personally I'd feel bad about catching and freaking him out so often, but then you're risking the wound getting infected. Although there's also a good chance it won't.

Hopefully others will see this too and give opinions on what they'd do. Good luck, keep us posted.

 

[LeaKP]

What a lucky bird! If you can find an avian vet, that's the best place to take this little refugee.