'He's Our Bird': Manhattan Sparrow Stranded After Derecho A Fighter

MANHATTAN, IL — A hatchling found featherless and alone after a derecho ripped through Manhattan last month has been given a fighting chance by a longtime Manhattan resident.

Aptly named "Derecho," the sparrow was likely only a day or two old, and without help, wouldn't have survived. Now nearly a month later, its feathers have grown in, and its will to survive has won hearts.

"He was helpless, but he was not hopeless," said Niki Costello. "He was a fighter."

After the July 15 storm walloped her hometown of 20 years, Costello only wanted to help. Diagnosed with MS, she was unable to do so physically. She turned to social media to offer her time, and home for anyone without power. It was then she first spotted the bald baby bird. Found by fellow resident Linzy Durnavich and her son Eli, Costello felt maybe this was her way to uplift her community after it was hit hard by the storm.

"No nest, no family," Costello said, of how the bird was found. "... When you see a baby laying there with no feathers, no other birds around, there’s not a chance it’s going to survive."

She volunteered to take on his care, building a makeshift nest in a box, and warming him with a heating pad. She fed him by hand with a tiny syringe—every 20 minutes, 12 hours a day.

She knew he had to be named after the storm—its lingual roots meaning "direct, straight ahead." As long as she had anything to say about it, there was nowhere for him to go but forward.

"This little guy is going to make it," she remembers vowing.

Costello has done this sort of thing before—saving a bird or two per year, she said—so she knew the basics.

"The fledglings and the nestlings, you put them right back in the nest," she said. "They need to be with their mom if possible.... "

It started when she was a little girl growing up in Green Garden, when she and her mother would take in struggling baby birds.

"I do distinctly remember two times I was able to help out," she said. "I’ve always had this soft spot for wild animals and nature."

Costello isn't quite sure if Derecho is male or female. As she nursed it through its early days with her, she took to social media to share their story. Little "Derecho Manhappio" captured the attention of a small town still reeling from the impact of a derecho and a tornado that swept through.

They needed it as much as it needed them.

"When this all happened, I looked at our town—for so much the controversy in the world that’s happening, when something happens with the destruction in the hometown, it didn’t matter political views, gender, nationality," Costello said, "It didn’t matter, we needed to come together and get our town back together. The amount of community that came together, was so nice.

"It just solidified that there are good people."

And they were all rooting for a little bird with a lot of pluck. They've cheered on his first flights, and hoped alongside Costello that he'd always circle back to her yard as "home." Costello has been careful to not handle him too much as he's grown, fearing it would prevent him from connecting with others of his species. She placed his cage outside, where he can see and hear them. Slowly, he's gotten braver. Small hops off his hamper have turned into day trips.

"Now he’s waking up in the morning, screaming at my bedroom window for a treat," she said, laughing. "He leaves for the day, comes back in the evening. Sometimes during the day he’ll come back. He’ll come back in the evenings, sleep in his tree or a bush. He definitely has a sense of home base."

And he seems to know the hand that—quite literally—fed him.

"... when I come to the door with the food, he’ll jump on the table outside," she said, almost insisting she sit and join him. "He's comfortable here."

She'll always have a birdfeeder and bird bath for him, as long as he wants to visit. But she is thrilled to see him (actually) spreading his wings, and she knows his biggest fans are, too.

"He’s got a following," Costello told Patch. "He’s our bird, and he made it through the storm, and so did everyone else. He made it through just like everyone else.

"It’s crazy, I can’t even tell you how much positivity has come from it."

A story of resilience, like that of Ranch Oaks subdivision banding together to recover from the tornado.

Derecho appeared to have injured his foot prior to his being discovered, but it doesn't slow him down, Costello said.

"He's from Manhattan, and we figure things out here!"