Friday, August 14, 2009

The early bird....

Yesterday morning we had a little excitement. We have a small shed that's attached to our garage where our bunnies, or should I say the boy's bunnies, live. It's not completely closed in at the top, which left room for a bird to make a nest. It's been there for several years now and there's always a robin each year with usually a couple of babies. It's always so cute to see them.

Occasionally, a baby bird will decide to fly out of the nest, but usually into the shed rather than in the other direction, which would take it outside. The boys went to take care of their rabbits yesterday morning and found a baby bird sitting on the window sill. Not wanting it to stay stranded, Kenny decided to try to capture it and bring it out of the shed. He wasn't as successful as he had planned, and it kept getting away from him. When the boys told me about it, I went out to give them a hand.


At one time, during my former life, I had 4 parakeets, 6 cockatiels, 2 lorikeets, and a cherry-head conure, so I knew how to catch a bird without fear of being pecked and without hurting the bird. Kenny, on the other hand, was a little fearful of hurting the baby robin, so it kept getting away from him.

Poor little thing. I caught it and held it to my chest while the boys went to get the ladder in the garage. They set it up and I climbed to the top to put him back in the nest. Of course, things don't always go as planned and he took off again into the shed. The mother and it's sibling were in the nest and flew out right above my head and toward the nearby chokecherrie bushes. Great! Now I had to go get the bird again, but the nest didn't seem like the best option now that his mom and his brother were out. The second baby landed in the grass, not far from Bandit (our huskey), who began licking his chops. I grabbed that one up and placed it on a branch of the same bush that the mom was on. Then I went to get the first baby in the shed, again. All this time, Mom's scolding me and the feathers on her head were so fluffed up, that she looked like she had spiked hair.


Finally, I got the first baby and placed him/her on the same branch as the second one and we left them alone and brought Hunter with us. I could still hear the mom scolding at whomever while we were back in the house. Hunter kept pestering to go out, so I tied him, poor guy...



Eventually, Mom and babies left the bush and headed elsewhere, but when we untied Hunter later on, he must have found him (hence his name...), because I could hear her still scolding away.

2 comments:

  1. Thats good that mother bird didn't reject them. We once helped some baby birds and the mother never came back to the nest.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was worried about that and was prepared to take them in until they could fend for themselves, but she stayed by them and continued to take care of them. I think it's because they were old enough. If they had been younger she probably would have abandoned them.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting my blog and your comment. Have a great day!