A baby tree sparrow

I went along with some local conservationists to a mixed use landfill/sewage farm site. Despite these undesirable activities, the site has huge ecological diversity. It also has one of London's only (possibly the only) colonies of tree sparrows. We were there to monitor the nesting boxes and ring any young sparrows we found. The man leading the expedition has a license and is employed to do this by the site owners.

The first nest we found still had eggs in it. We got to the second nest and it had three youngsters in it, around a week old. One of them was tangled in what we think was horse hair and it was a struggle to get it out of the nest. We cut it free as well as we could but it still had tightly bound horse hairs around its neck and had swallowed some which was protruding from its mouth. It wasn't going to survive like that so we took it to the local wildlife hospital. Amazingly they managed to free it in under 10 minutes and handed it back to us, at which point I took this photo and the man leading the expedition cycled back to the nest to put this one back. We're hoping that as we only had it away from the nest for about 40 minutes that it will be accepted by the parents. The wildlife hospital is a charity and did an amazing job.