UPDATE on Sparrow!

The weather outside was pretty nice today, so I brought the House Sparrow outside. She seems to be enjoying the sun outside too. Sometimes when I peak out the window to check on her, I will see her sunbathing lightly on a high branch.

Enjoying a little sunshine.

I also let the chickens out. Maybe not enough mental stimulation was causing my White Leghorn girls to be mean? I also noticed Lime frequently pecking at her neck feathers. It was worth a shot.

The flock swarmed around the bird feeder's fallen seed, it wasn't long until they noticed the interesting cage outside. Lemon, Charcoal, and Lime wandered towards the bird cage contain the sparrow, the little birdie hopped around nervously as her giant counterparts neared.

Lemon and Sparrow have a stare-down contest.

The girls decide to leave after finding that a little sparrow perhaps, wasn't as entertaining as they thought.

Lime takes another look before leaving.

UPDATE: 4/14/14

After changing the sparrow's water and food, I noticed that whenever she got scared by my presences she would flutter and hop around nervously. And after I was away in the distance would she would settle down and breath heavily (with an open mouth), making a clicking sound. Oh no. . .I thought. Clicking or wheezing sounds while breathing heavily in birds usually meant air sac mites, which would make sense because Sparrow came from the wild. If there were too many mites, the host would eventually die as air sac mites are surprisingly active (this activity can damage a bird's respiratory system), their dropping can also cause irritation in birds ( making it more difficult to breath).

The sparrow breathing with an open mouth.

As I searched online for more symptoms, I found that Sparrow matched a lot of them.

Symptoms of Air sac mites:

• Clicking.
• Open mouth breathing.
• Tail bobbing - which means the bird is trying hard to breath.
• Being less vocal - the only sounds she would make were these tiny squeaks, and when I compared her noise to a bird that was infected with air sac mites on a YouTube video, I was convinced she had mites too.
• Less activity and being fluffed up most of the time - Sparrow was fluffed up most of the time too. I read on and learned that it was to conserve heat
• Weight loss - I noticed this the first time I held her, she was significantly lighter and skinnier than my finches at home.

Sparrow had all of these symptoms, and most of them were made obvious after her constant fluttering when I neared her cage.

I will get some medicine tomorrow if I can find it in my local pet stores, preferably containing Ivermectin which is said to work better than SCATT. From how the little sparrow is behaving, I'm not feeling very hopeful that she will last long enough before I get the medicine.

Here the site I got most of my information from: http://www.officialbarrieshuttbudgerigars.com/airsacmites.htm