Bird trapped in chimney - any ideas?

[Clive Page]

For the last day or so we've been hearing scraping noises from above the fireplace and it's clear a small bird has fallen down the chimney and got stuck there. We've had this before many years ago, but found the bird eventually escaped into the room and we were able to chase it out of the door. This time it resolutely refuses, but it's clearly alive and intermittently active.

The fire is a Jetmaster, the standard model I think, rather as shown on this web page,

which one can see that there is a space above the fire, with two holes a few inches across where the smoke goes up. The bird seems to be in the central area between them and above the metal parts of the fire. I guess having fallen once it isn't keen to jump down another hole into an unknown future. I can't see how to dismantle the fire without pulling it out into the room, which would be pretty difficult now, as there's a large hearth that would have to be removed first.

There is a shutter which closes off the flue when not in use; I've opened this of course, and by peering up I can sometimes just see its tail feathers or the tip of its beak, if the bird moves to the right position. I've tried so far:

• Threading my arm up (wearing gloves) to try to grab it or part of it.

• Shining a bright light up to tempt it down.

• Tempting it with a bit of wet bread on a long fork (wet bread is still there)

• Pushing rags up one hole to try to fill the void so it has no option but to come down the other hole, but the void seems too large for this to work.

• Pushing netting up in the hope that it will get entangled, and can be pulled down.

But we're beginning to run out of ideas. Of course the poor bird might be dead by the time you read this, in which case I'll have a different problem (but at least then it won't move about when I try to grab it).

[Andy Burns]

[David WE Roberts]

We had a similar fire to the Jetmaster (UK made), and to sweep the chimney you just slid the whole fire box out into the room (onto the hearth) and then slid it back in afterwards.

This was all laid out in the installation intructions.

If you can't get a bird down, how do you get a set of chimney sweeping brushes up and then recover the swept soot? Ah, O.K., removable throat restricctor. Which allows you to get a brush up it and remove the soot afterwards.

So the Friendly Manual suggests that you undo the nuts and remove the throat restrictor.

course, the installer should have left you with a copy of this.

HTH

Dave R

[Clive Page]

Thanks, David. I haven't seen that before. I looked on their website but, stupidly, I didn't realise that the installation guide had the information I needed. Bird is quiet and obviously sleeping now; will try to take off the throat restrictor tomorrow.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I had one such that failed to exit at the bottom

eventually it died and I was able to extract the mess eventually from below.

Think of it as Darwin in action....

[DavidM]

Some years ago we had a pidgeon down the chimney, but only part way down - it was running up and down the sloping bit of the flue.

Wife called the fire brigade for advice, "don't worry madam, we'll send an engine round". Engine duly arrived, great entertainment for all the kids in road - school holidays. Fireman on roof, two more in living room peering up chimney, rods being poked up and down, bird running up and down - an hour later, "sorry madam - we've got another call, have to wait until it drops out on it's own, but don't light a fire, you don't want a flaming pidgeon flying around your living room!"

A week or so later wife was hoovering all the dust out of the fireplace when the hoover sort of stalled. Pulled the nozzle out - one dead pidgeon with it's head stuck up the spout. Presented to me to "clean up the mess" when I got home from work that night.

[Mark]

I doubt it will have a significant impact of the evolution of the species.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its is very important to remove the utterly dimwitted and clueless from the gene pool before any possibility of breeding happens.

Otherwise look at Drivel, Dennis@Home and harry.

And be very afraid..

[geoff]

While I don't always agree with TNP, ...

valid point

[Clive Page]

I agree in general, but here...

The on-line manual for the Jetmaster wasn't any help, as I guess the model we have here is too old. But eventually, after liberal use of WD40, I managed to shift enough bolts to dismantle part of the fire and remove the (now dead) bird. I was slightly surprised to see that it was a young magpie (black and off-black from the soot). I threw the body on the lawn. Other magpies in the area spotted it quite quickly and spent the next few hours making intermittent alarm calls. It isn't there this morning, no doubt our local fox got it. All part of life's rich pattern, as they say.

Back to Darwinism: I have obviously removed a dim-witted magpie from the gene pool but is this a good thing? I'm not entirely sure I want the magpie species to be even fractionally more intelligent.