Eighth-grader Maile Thompson sits on clean towels draped over the donated sofa. Christopher sits next to her, busy behaving himself. He leans his head onto her leg. It's clear she's his best buddy.

"He was found injured on a hiking trail," Robert Reichardt explains. "He was the size of a Nerf football when we got him in. His foot was all curled up, and he was doing what we call 'knuckle walking.' Maile worked with him for months to rehab his leg."

Christopher has patches of white feathers on his body and sections of dappled brown, while his neck is that pretty peacock blue-green. He has a tall crown of swaying feathers on his head. Maile says he'll eat almost anything, but corn is his favorite. He's much bigger than a football now, but has more growing to go.

Maile and Reichardt and about 15 others volunteer for the Wild Bird Rehab Haven. Six months ago, the group established the intake center for injured wild birds and abandoned baby birds in a small room above Magoo's Pizza on University Avenue. The space, and the benevolent landlord, were a prayer answered for the devoted bird-rescuers, who previously had been driving all over the island to gather up the little hurt birds people would find, and taking them home to nurse them back to health, sometimes caring for a hundred at a time.

The volunteers are still driving around to fetch injured birds and still tending to birds at home, but now there's a central location and a phone number that serves as a bird-rescue hot line..

"We see this as the starting step," says Linda Leveen, one of the founders of Wild Bird Rehab Haven. Someday, they hope to have a comprehensive intake and rehabilitation center with medical care and paid staff, and a large aviary where birds too disabled to make it on their own can live out their lives in cageless comfort.

Right now, there is this room, a network of about 50 supporters and the belief that every life is precious.

"We accept all wild birds, regardless of condition," Leveen says.

They have applied for a federal permit to be able to care for injured migratory birds and protected species such as pueo, the Hawaiian short-eared owl. For now, when they get an injured kolea, or Pacific golden plover, they call federal and state officials to let them know.

There are more than enough mynahs, doves, waxbills and cardinals to keep them busy. Each species has its own dietary needs, social groupings and behavioral considerations. Doves like to be together in one cage. Mynahs will fight. The babies who have been orphaned or abandoned or blown out of their nests have to be fed around the clock.

"We can use twice as many volunteers to help," Leveen says. In the past six months, 500 birds have come through the intake center.

Like most of the volunteers, Reichardt never had a special affinity for birds until one came to him for help. And then another came. And then another.

"In some cases, I've had them literally fall on my head," he says. "Anyone who says synchronicity doesn't exist ... this happened to me over and over again."

Reichardt worked on Christopher's injured leg for months, taping the foot like a sports trainer would, stretching the ligaments and teaching Maile how to exercise the bird by bicycling his little legs or doing passive resistance, in which she pushed and the bird pushed back.

Reichardt let Maile take Christopher home after she talked it over with her mom and all her neighbors.

"I wanted to name him Pikake," she says, referring to the name given Princess Ka'iulani's favorite flower and favorite bird. "But I think he already knows his name."

Christopher has a safe spot in Maile's yard. Sometimes he sleeps there. But — and Maile grins as she says this — "Sometimes he spends the night in my room."

The Wild Bird Rehab Haven hopes to add an educational component to its work: going into schools to teach basic bird-care and simple compassion. They have seen birds who have been shot with paint guns, hobbled with twist ties, bound with rubber bands.

"What we have to do is not get angry, but we say, 'Well, we have a lot of education to do,' " Leveen says.

So far, everything they've needed has shown up at their door, as if someone is looking after the folks who look after the birds.

"Everything here was donated," Leveen says. "When we need something, we've just put it out in the community, and so far, it has come to us. It just shows up."

Maybe a bigger home will show up, too. Ideally, it would be close to Honolulu, where birds are most greatly affected by the perils of urban life.

"People come to us with a bird they found, and they're so upset," Leveen says. "They say, 'Help me. I don't want this one to die.' That's who we're serving as much as the birds."

"People find an injured or abandoned bird and it changes them. It changes their lives. Before, they just saw a mass of anonymous birds in a flock," co-founder Andrea Nandoskar says. "Now, they're holding this being who can feel and has a personality. They didn't go out looking for it. The bird came to them. It found them."

"People see how the bird will fight to live," Leveen says. "Obviously, their lives are valuable to them."

Christopher hops off the couch and starts making trouble, climbing some of the dove cages. Maile is on it immediately.

"He's looking for a place to roost. He wants to go to bed," Maile says, so she makes him comfortable in a carrier. She's come to know him so well.

Reichardt darts around the room feeding this one, changing that water, talking to another who is out and practicing how to fly.

"We don't give up on anybody here," he says.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.