When blustering winds blew across Susan Simon’s property, an abundance of tree leaves wriggled loose from their branches and flittered about, eventually fluttering to the ground. The winds were so forceful they caused a nest to break free from a light fixture and tumble to the ground, too.

Sadly, there was a brand new baby house finch in that nest.

“He was only as big as my thumb, just a day old. He looked prehistoric. No feathers, just a bit of fuzz.”

She placed the baby back in the nest on the ground and left to run errands. The second she returned home, she checked on it.

There it was, barely clinging to life. Susan snatched up the pale pink floundering baby and gingerly cradled it in her hand to keep it warm. She watched and waited for its momma to return.

“She never came back.”

There was no way Susan was going to allow this baby bird to die on her watch. She carried the baby into her house, sat down at the computer and began Googling how to rescue and care for a baby bird.

She grabbed a Tupperware container from the cupboard, lined it with paper towels and set it on a heating pad. Then she grabbed a toothpick to poke tiny bites of food to cautiously place inside the baby’s beak. It only weighed 14 or so grams, so Susan had to feed it every 15 minutes.

“I had to make little noises at him, poke him and touch his beak until he opened his mouth.”

Susan dedicated herself to ensuring this baby lived and didn’t perish on her watch. The bird began growing stronger and at six days old, it started chirping in the morning, asking her for breakfast.

“He started peeping at me to get fed. He looked like a tiny dinosaur. He put on two grams a day and started getting pin feathers.”

At one wee, the bird opened its eyes. The baby bird’s pin feathers grew in completely at two weeks and it started flapping its wings. She began escorting the bird outside often to help acclimate it to its natural environment.

At three weeks old, the bird she named Twerp would flit from her hand to its bird cage. While outside feeding Twerp on the porch, it flew off!

“I thought, oh, he’s gone. But that afternoon he came back. He’d sit on my hand and I could feed him, then he’d fly away. He’d come to the door and yell at me. It was amazing. He’d come five or six times a day and would fly away when it was done.”

Susan set up feeders stocked with birdseed to help Twerp learn how to feed himself. Eventually, Twerp grew confidant enough that it took off and never returned.

“I’m just amazed that I raised him. It’s hard to believe that I did that.”

See Twerp’s amazing and miraculous development from a newborn near death to a strong and healthy bird able to take flight and soar.