A boy and his bird: Child forms inseparable bond with injured sparrow which now travels with him wherever he goes

• Vadim Veligurov, 12, from Siberia is best friends with a sparrow called Abi
• He rescued and nursed the just-hatched bird and she refused to leave him
• Now he plans to take her to his home town after his summer break is over

By Sam Webb
PUBLISHED: 09:33 EST, 26 August 2013 | UPDATED: 10:39 EST, 26 August 2013
A Siberian boy has formed a touching friendship with a wild sparrow after nursing it back to health.
Vadim Veligurov, 12, from the town of of Dudinka, the administrative capital of the Taymyr Peninsula in northern Russia, found abandoned Abi just after she hatched.
He brought the lost female baby bird to his grandmother's house in Minusinsk, some 264 miles south of Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, where he was spending the summer vacation.

The wings of love: Vadim Veligurov, 12, kisses Abi, a wild sparrow, during a walk near his grandmother's house in the town of Minusinsk, Siberia

Rest: Abi places her head on the boy's shoulder. He rescued her soon after she hatched and the two are now best friends

He fed and nurtured the little bird but when the sad day came to set it free, Abi decided to stay with the boy instead of fly away. The pair are now inseperable.
Abi now spends most of her time with Vadim, who treats the bird as his friend and plans to take it with him when he returns to his native town.

She will happily sit on the boy's shoulder and is completely comfortable eating out of his hands, reports Radio Sarajevo.

Aerobatics: Abi perches on Vadim's shirt as he hangs upside down from a bar (left). The boy feeds Abi an ice cream cone inside his grandmother's house (right)

Know your enemy: Vadim holds a tablet computer showing a picture of a cat in front of his pet bird

The charming situation echoes that of a four-year-old boy who has no human friends of his own who formed an incredible bond with a gibbon
Putra the tailless-ape is the best mate of little Deo Saputra, who lives on Indonesia's Bintan Island.
Local photographer Andri Mediansyah, 34, found the ape-human best friends by accident as he drove past their house.
'Deo and Putra have lived together since they were babies,' said Andri.
'It is astonishing to see a four-year-old boy so close to an animal that is cute - but also very strong with powerful jaws.'

Real life Mowgli: Deo Saputra enjoys a lark with his best friend Putra, the black-furred Gibbon on Bintan Island, Indonesia