Scott sent another audio report Thursday morning with some not-so-good news. Jill's been fighting an infection the last couple of days and things aren't looking too good for her. While she does perk up when Scott's around, she's been having periods where she obviously is not feeling well.
Although she's sick, she's still responding and eating a bit, and wants nothing more than to be held close by Scott. When she's held and cradled in Scott's hand, she makes almost a purring sound.
Wild birds do not do well in captivity, but we're hoping that she'll pull through her latest problems. In this photo from a week ago, you can see her hurt wing hanging down a little bit preventing her from flying, but otherwise, it hasn't slowed her down much yet as she still likes to hop around looking for bugs.
Evening Update - Scott called late last night with the sad news that Jill has died.
After stealing our hearts for the last month (it was about this time last month that the abandoned baby birds, Jack and Jill, were adopted by Christina and Scott), Jill's gone to the big bird's nest in the sky. She got weaker throughout the day yesterday, and finally passed away last night.
She's been the focus of our attention for what seems like most of the summer and we tried to give her the best chance possible to survive. She was kept warm and dry, and had all the food and water she needed. She loved the bugs caught for her (although for a while, there weren't many bugs around), and in the last week, Scott was taking her out in the small cage to find bugs.
This last picture is Jill at her best, before she hurt her wing. She'd sit in the open door of her page, just waiting for someone to walk by so she could fly out and land on your head.
We'll miss the little songs she sung throughout the day and we'll miss just having her around. But, at least we were able to give her a month of life that she otherwise wouldn't have had after being orphaned off by her parents last month...
