Jack gets flying visit from the bird he saved
WHEN pensioner Jack Moran nursed an injured starling back to health before releasing it, he assumed that would be the last time he saw it.
But a year later the bird is back – with the family in tow. Mr Moran was stunned to spot the same female starling in his garden, along with a mate and three chicks. And they are so tame they feed out of his hand.
The heart-warming tale began when the mother crashed into a window of Mr Moran’s home in Crosby, Liverpool, last summer.
He said: “It damaged its wing and was stunned. I fed it and kept an eye on it and it eventually flew off. But it came back to see me next day and I fed it again.”
The starling finally set off on its winter migration and may have travelled to Spain or North Africa.
But it appears to have remembered the kindly human and has flown back to be reunited.
Now Mr Moran, 83, and his wife Anne, 80, buy an extra two loaves of bread a week and mealworms to feed their flock.
Around 50 starlings feed in the garden but none are as trusting as these.
Grahame Madge, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said it was impossible to know exactly where Mr Moran’s feathered friend went in the winter.
But he added: “Birds are biologically programmed to return to their breeding grounds.”