The last couple of weeks have been crazy. One of the projects going on behind the scenes involved trying to raise two baby birds that the neighbors brought to us. When they brought them here, they were probably about a week old. They had some pin feathers and a bit of fluff but had a lot of pink skin showing. They were tiny, about the diameter of a quarter. My first guess was that they were some type of wren, due to the tiny size. My daughter, Ada, named them Cottonball and Silly Feathers. Silly Feathers had a piece of worm stuck to its head when we got it, thus the name. So, for the next thirteen days, our feeding schedule was every thirty minutes during the daylight hours being careful not to contaminate the food in between feedings.
I was amazed when we got them to the fledgling stage. Silly Feathers had a twisted leg that as it matured pointed straight up from the joint. I didn’t see how Silly Feathers would ever make it in the wild, because it would have to perch on one leg. Cottonball, on the other hand, was very vigorous. Cottonball started flying out of the shoebox like a bumblebee. And I have a picture, somewhere, of Cottonball sitting on top of a spice jar in my kitchen. So, my husband helped me build a flight cage beneath the pergola.
During the warm parts of the day, we put Cottonball out there, so it could get exercise and start getting used to outside. Silly Feathers got to go out occasionally, as well. Silly Feathers seemed to be getting worse and worse and finally stopped eating and died. Cottonball, however, was doing so well that we started turning it out of the flight cage and letting it fly around outside during the day. I made sure I was outside to make sure a cat didn’t kill it. Cottonball would fly down and perch on my finger or my head to be fed. And I’d put Cottonball up at night for safekeeping. For a series of warm nights I left Cottonball in the flightcage, because it banged against the box and seemed to want to be outside. All was well until one morning, the thirteenth day, when I stepped out to feed Cottonball first thing in the morning and was shocked that it was cold outside, 60 degrees. Cottonball was all poofed up in a corner of the cage and cheeping, but weakly. It hopped over to me, but I knew we were in trouble. SHad I looked at the forecast the night before, I would have brought it in that night, but I did not. I still had the heating pad going, so took it in and put it in the warm box to warm it for a few moments before trying to feed it. It died within the next five minutes.
Suffice it to say, I felt horrible. I felt lucky to have raised them to fledgling status and felt we were doing all that we could, but such a tiny bird, (three inches long at fledgling size) has precious little reserves. I’ve raised birds in the past and managed to get them successfully fledged and launched, so was following that same protocol, but failed in the end, on this one.
I’ve found with baby birds, and told Ada from the get-go, that you do the best you can but assume something is going to happen at some point or another. And, yes, I know that it is technically illegal to help out a baby bird. When we found a nest of screech owls a couple of summers ago, I tracked down the experts and drove halfway to St. Louis to get them to someone who could handle their special requirements, teach them to hunt, etc. I’ll post the link to that place later, and it is wonderful and is what I recommend for most small creatures that need help. Anyway, here’s Cottonball a day or so before it was flying all over the yard and in the lower right is a picture of the flight cage we built to help transition it to full time outside then wild.
