Piccalilli is about 7 weeks old in this video.
She's a Grey-Headed Flying-Fox orphan who was found on her dead mum in a street gutter.
She has been in care for about 5 weeks and for most of that time she has been a lone baby without any buddies. With the recent arrival of 2 more babies, she's become stressed, withdrawn, and unwilling to interact.
She needed some special time with her carers and some more consistency. Maggie and I fed her separately from the others, gave her more "mum" time, and made a lot of eye contact during feeds.
For making eye contact, or any self initiated behaviour, she was given some honey from the syringe. She likes the honey.
It took about 3 days before she started to come out of her stressed state and within a week she was more confident and secure emotionally. She started eating the fruit on the airer and asserting herself more with Beetidubs and Winnie.
At 10 weeks I sent her to minicreche because she was fit and emotionally ready for this experience. She joined the aviary crowd and the other juveniles, then was transferred to creche, and then release creche on schedule.
Piccalilli was released via the creche release system in March 2019. She was emotionally and physically ready for release.
I hope she's out there learning how to survive in her intended world.
UPDATE:
Piccalilli was released via the creche system in March 2019, 5 months after coming into care.
Creche info:
When the hand raised babies are 3 months old, they go into a creche, where they join other orphans and form a group. At this stage they'd be separating from this batty mums and be becoming more independent in the colony. In creche, at this age, they learn batty etiquette and how to live in a batty society. They shrug off their human mums and want to be with the other batties. When they are emotionally and physically ready, and uninjured, and around 4-5 months old, they’re put into a release cage under a colony and they can integrate into the colony and fly out with the wild bats. If they can’t find enough food, they can always come back to the cage for a feed. Support feeding is put up on the outside of the cage for as long as they are coming back and eating it. When the colony flies out for winter, they have fully integrated and fly out with them.
Ещё видео!