These adorable images show seven hungry great tit chicks adopted by a Dutch woman after she found them abandoned in her garden and decided to play mum.
Marika Spijkers first discovered the adorable young-lings last week in her front garden at her home in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands.
Describing the moment she made the discovery, she wrote: “They shouted loudly for food, because the father hadn’t been in the nest for days either.”
Marika found it difficult to know what to do with the birds as the veterinary services are limited during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but eventually settled on becoming their mum herself.
She posted: “I am now the mother of seven great tits.
“And it’s going very well. It’s almost a day’s work to raise them, because these critters have to eat a lot. And when they’ve eaten, they turn around with their asses up in the air and then you have to catch the shit. But they eat and poop, hurray.”
However, the unusual undertaking has not been without its challenges for the big-hearted nature lover, and she initially struggled to find the right grub for her new youngsters.
She could only get large mealworms and said: “I had to chop their heads off and chop them into pieces, otherwise they were way too big.”
However, she admits she didn’t like the fact that the worms continued to move afterwards so she settled on giving the birds a nutritional supplement instead.
Despite a positive start, Marika admits that she has no idea what the future holds for her adopted offspring.
She told local media: “Normally they leave the nest when they’re about 19 days old. After that they are normally fed by their parents for another two weeks. Of course, that’s not possible now, so I can only let them fly out when they eat on their own.”
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Story By: Conor Sheils, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: Central European News
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