KEY POINTS:
A run-in with a "feisty" native Kingfisher set a Herald staff member on a trail deep into the heart of volunteer Auckland and a woman devoted to caring for injured birds.
Rafael Caso was walking through Mangere Bridge Primary School with his daughter Naomi in November when they came upon the distressed kingfisher chick in the grass.
Mr Caso said the bird looked strong and "feisty" with only a few remaining tufts of baby feathers, but had little chance of survival outside of the nest.
He caught it using a t-shirt and stored it in a box in the hotwater cupboard until SPCA staff arrived to look after it.
Sometime later Mr Caso wondered what had happened to his kingfisher chick and went to visit Lyn Macdonald, the volunteer from the SPCA's BirdWing centre who looked after the young bird.
Ms Macdonald runs a bird hospital from her Henderson home and at any one time can be nursing up to 100 birds.
Mr Caso said her home was given over to injured birds. "As soon as I walked in it was just nuts," he said.
Ms Macdonald began looking after injured birds when she was raising her own brood of four children.
She said it was a way of giving something back to the community that she could do from home.
Now that her children have flown the nest, Ms Macdonald is introducing her grandchildren to the wonders of looking after birds.
Mr Cato's young kingfisher survived under her care and has moved on to longer-term SPCA BirdWing care in Manurewa.
