Woman Lets Abandoned Baby Bird Nest In Her Hair For 84 Days

A woman found respite from her boredom and isolation by taking on the role of a mother to an abandoned baby bird for nearly three months. The experience changed her so much that she decided to turn the story into a book, "Fledgling," which is releasing next month.

Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a photographer and copywriter, moved from London to Ghana with her husband, Robin, after he took on a new job in 2013. Hannah couldn’t work at the time because of visa issues and found herself homesick without many friends or neighbors to keep her company, according to the New York Post. However, things took an interesting turn when monsoon showers began in September 2018.

“After one particularly bad thunderstorm, I found a fledgling – a bronze-winged mannikin finch – barely a month old, on the ground,” Hannah told The Guardian. “He was abandoned by his flock, his nest blown from the mango tree. His eyes were tightly shut and he was shuddering, too young to survive alone. He was the size of my little finger, with feathers the color of Rich Tea biscuits, inky eyes and a small bill like a pencil lead.”

A cardboard box with tea towels became the baby bird’s makeshift nest that night. Hannah fed the fledgling termites the next day and watched him settle into her palm and fall asleep.

“As far as he was concerned, I was his mother,” Hannah told the publication. “For the next 84 days, the fledgling lived on me. We became inseparable. He would fly alongside me, or cling to me as I went from room to room in the house, while we walked the grasslands or when I drove. He’d rest in my hand.”

Hannah would be filled with “awe” when the fledgling “made little ‘nests’ in my hair, on the groove of my collarbone” every day.

“He’d tuck himself under a curtain of hair and gather individual strands with his beak, sculpting them into a round of woven locks, resembling a small nest, then settling inside. He would allow it to unravel when he was done and start again the next day,” she went on to say.

Hannah did not name her feathered friend because she knew he needed to return to the wild some day. Nevertheless, the pair bonded and “needed each other” in different ways.

“In return for putting his life back on course, he was replotting mine by giving me purpose and new perspective,” Hannah told the outlet.

Once his flock returned, Hannah and her husband took conscious efforts to wean him off her, and eventually, the bird made his big return to the wild.

“I’d watch out for him when the finches flew past. Every now and then, one would hang back, on a branch, and stare at me. I still cry when I think of him,” Hannah said in her interview. “Raising him taught me how to live in the present and changed me forever.”

Hannah returned back to Oxfordshire and joined local conservation efforts. She also wrote the book that is slated to release on April 5. “That, along with the lesson that any tiny animal can make a difference, will be his legacy,” Hannah added.