The Skinny Orphan Part 3

It's disarming when a tiny blobby baby bird whose eyes aren't even open becomes so conditioned to your attentions that it begs when it hears your voice. I didn't even whistle--just spoke to these birds. We're at the Hendershot box with its cushy deer hair nest, and in it are four original babies plus two fosters--Ritchie and Eddy (named for the boxes from which they came). 

Here, Eddy, the smallest of the bunch of six I took in, hollers for food when I come to feed them on April 25. He's the lone survivor of a brood of six abandoned the day they hatched, April 21. I fed these two orphans at home for three days, then installed them in this box, where the foster parents are taking good care of them.

               

He's alive, but he's not catching up fast enough to his siblings. I know I need to make another plan. I happen to have one box (Warren 2) where a female has been steadfastly sitting on a clutch of five eggs for 20 days. The normal bluebird incubation period is 14 days. Those eggs aren't going to hatch. 

Just to make sure, I candle them with a flashlight. 

This is a fertile bluebird egg after 11 days of incubation. There's a big gas space, and red blood vessels, and a big dark mass that is the developing chick.

This is one of the five eggs from the Warren 2 clutch after 20 days of incubation. Yellow yolk, clear albumen: Nothing going on. 

I feel bad for the Warren 2 female, but her life is about to get more interesting. I decide to replace those infertile eggs with one skinny Miracle Baby, the one survivor of the ill-fated brood of six abandoned on their first day of life. He's going to go from #6 to NUMBA ONE!!

             

Curtis rides along for my otherwise lonely bluebird rounds. It's so nice to have a sentient creature along who understands what all this means to me. 

He's got a tremendously strong prey drive. Look how his understanding of the situation totally overrides his instinct to snap up that helpless little thing. 

           

On the afternoon of April 25, I installed this skinny little chick into the box with its valiant but fruitlessly sitting mother. She was in for a surprise when she returned to sit on her eggs. I removed a couple of the infertile eggs to make room for him. That chick's life was about to get a whole lot better.

 Look at him just 24 hours later, the afternoon of April 26!!! One day of loving care as Only Baby in Warren 2, and he's plump and warm and presumably very grateful.

Bluebird Ambulance: Part 2

 

          

In a little meadow next to the Eddy's home, there's a bluebird box that was put up and maintained by my late friend Jeff Warren. It hadn't been on my regular route to check. On this snowy morning, I thought I'd better open it up. Imagine how I felt on finding six day-old bluebirds, just hatched and already cold to the touch, abandoned by their mother. At first, I couldn't imagine why she didn't give it more of a try than that, but I have to guess that she knew she couldn't find the right soft caterpillars to feed them in the snow. Ahh it was awful to see them just born and already dying. I couldn't stand it. I took them in and put them in the Igloo, which had three hot water bottles going full bore inside.

It took a few hours for them to pink up and get happy, but by that afternoon, they were doing a lot better.

Especially look at the huge one at the bottom of the frame here--that's the Ritchie baby, found alone and immobile, that I warmed up in my bracubator. Well, they all took turns in there, all day long. 

              

The next day, I slipped the Ritchie orphan into the Hendershot box, with four other babies who had never been abandoned by their parents. For obvious reasons, it works better if the disadvantaged baby is a bit older than the host brood. You can see his big ol' head on top of the stack. I fed them all some bug omelet--I'd been feeding the host brood all through the cold snap anyway. I wanted to get the Ritchie baby into the care of bluebirds ASAP, as I was in over my head and it was all I could do to keep all seven of them warm and fed.

The Hendershot nest is made mostly of whitetail deer hair, thanks to a newly occupied hunting cabin right next to it. Carcasses aplenty, strewn here and there. :/

You may have noticed the dearth of deer photos in my blogposts in the past two years. This is not a coincidence. The old gang has been hard-hit, and I mourn them. On the upside, I'm finding more interesting plants in the forest understory than I have in decades. I don't think this is a coincidence either.

Out in my meadow, the five week-old babies I'd been feeding egg food through the cold snap were looking thrifty. By far the oldest on my trail (she had eggs by April 1!), they have a great set of parents who know to look to me for food when things get tough. I wish it were always as easy as leaving bowls of mealworms on the box tops, but you can't do that until the babies are at least 8 days old--they can't digest the chitin on the worms. So I'm stuck with hand-feeding them in their nests until they're older than Day 8. 

Meanwhile, I'd found another of my late friend Jeff Warren's old boxes with a likely host brood in it. I slipped two of my foster babies from the six-chick brood into the Whipple run box. 

This should have worked, but it wound up not succeeding. The next time I checked, the two foster babies were gone, tossed out by the host parents. They weren't nearly as strong as the host babies, and it was still very cold, after all. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. 

On that same afternoon, I drove two more chicks to far-flung boxes in friends' yards. It was a long shot, but I was out of same-age broods. Neither of those took, either. 

Of the seven I took in in the snowstorm, one died right off, and only two of the remaining six wound up being successfully fostered.  But two is better than none, and I learned a lot about caring for newly hatched bluebirds. I learned that it is way beyond my capabilities. They're so much better off with bluebirds! Especially at that tender age. Give me a three or four day old chick, and I'm good. But not Day 1 or 2. 

I wound up putting the two strongest of the babies I'd taken in into the Hendershot box, lined with deer hair. This photo from April 23 evening shows the big-mouthed Ritchie baby and the small Eddy baby (lower) begging, along with four host babies. I didn't want to burden any pair with six in this weather, but I was subsidizing them several times a day, and I had a plan for that small Eddy baby once the weather turned warmer.

I know this is like a novel with lots of confusing characters walking in and out. I'm doing my best to make it all clear. I keep copious and careful notes about where each nestling came from and which box had what age chicks. In the evening, I'd get my notebooks and strategize on where and when I might place orphans. 

When I meet people who have many dozens or maybe even hundreds of bluebird boxes to check and care for, I know that we are doing two very different things, operating at different levels. On one hand, having lots of boxes would give me more choices when it comes to fostering babies. On the other, a snow in late April or freezes in May would be exponentially more disastrous and crushing. I'm trying to strike a balance, knowing myself as I do, and knowing that I will drop everything to save tiny lives. I dream of decent spring weather, of Aprils and Mays when I don't have to live in apprehension and stress. 2022, I'm looking at you.

More to come...

Big Old Bluebird Tale

  “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was one of the formative books of my youth. It was the first book I'd ever read that celebrated being outdoors and noticing things in the immediate, abundant and joyful way I experienced them. It was a journal, condensed; it was a reaction to things seen, felt, lived, in the here and now. I fully ascribe to her sense of urgency here, and it's frustrating to have to hold back.

In spring, I have ever so much trouble keeping up with writing. So much is happening, and each thing, each day, it seems, could be its own book. I collect and journal and record and photograph and there's just so much to do, managing 80 acres and keeping this house in repair and really, just experiencing everything wonderful about living here, that my time runs too short to write much. If only some of the wild bloom and song could be sprinkled through November-February, so I could have time to write about it!

I've been messing about with bluebirds all spring, "helping" the birds nesting in my boxes here and there in my highly interventionist way, and I've learned gobs more about them. That is saying something, because I've been messing about with bluebirds since 1982. What I've learned is all so big and fascinating and wonderful that I've had trouble throwing a rope around it to write about it, but I have kept careful notes in my journal and bluebird notebook and I am trying to summarize all that's happened. Bluebirds--and all birds--always surprise me. My bluebird trail is a big old laboratory and I am the mad scientist.

It’s hard to overemphasize how much one snow in late April can screw things up for the bluebirds I tend, and for me. I have been paddling as hard as I can to keep up with the flow of events that have rolled out from one little cold snap, one little dump of snow on green leaves and nestboxes full of eggs and chicks. It's mid-May as I write, and I'm still tracking the chicks I worked with in the last two weeks of April. 

 

It was already shaping up to be a tough spring. On my modest trail of 18 boxes, bluebird pairs were down by half—no doubt because the winter of 2020-21 was so cruel down south, where they migrate to get away from such weather. A freeze like the Deep South saw, with snow and ice in south Texas, must kill a lot of wintering bluebirds. 

 

As the light slowly grew on the dawn of April 21, I was stunned to see two inches of snow coating everything. Snow on green leaves is one of my least favorite sights. I wanted so badly to stay under the covers and hold Curtis close, but I had to get up. Before my work started, I walked out the orchard to photograph dogwoods in the snow. Sourly, I observed that snow on white dogwoods just looks like more snow. I took photos anyway, and I’m glad I did, because they’re quite beautiful, now that I’m not facing days of hard labor thanks to that beautiful snow. 

 

See, what happens when it snows on April 21 is that the insects bluebirds depend on are suddenly and unequivocally unavailable. That means that adults will hardly be able to feed themselves, much less their new chicks. Bluebirds have no other choice than insects for baby food. So, realizing it’s useless to even try to find them, some pairs will abruptly desert their nests. 

 

Ten of my boxes were occupied, one by Carolina chickadees still building a nest, and nine by eastern bluebirds. 

There were chicks in six, and eggs in three of those bluebird nests. It’s not a huge deal for a female bluebird to sit out a cold spell on her eggs. She's got nobody to feed but herself, and her mate helps with that. She’s got a snug nestbox, a thick grass nest, and her own body heat to keep them warm.

It was the six boxes of chicks I was worried about. The brooding female can keep them warm, but without food, they won’t survive. 

 

So it was that I came in from snow photography and set straight to work in the kitchen, mixing up some bug omelet. I gathered my bent forceps, tissues, water, eyedropper, nestbox notebook, and fixed up a picnic cooler with hot water bottles and a makeshift tissue nest. Did I have everything? I hoped so. I opened the meadow box and was relieved to find five hungry six-day old bluebirds. I took the nest from the box, sheltered it as best I could with my body, and quickly fed the chicks to repletion with warm bug omelet. I stuffed the nest back in the rapidly cooling box and trotted back to the house, allowing the female bluebird to return and settle back on her chicks. No photos--it was all I could do to get them fed in the freezing cold wind, and put back in the box, without trying to record the moment. 

This is one of the easier boxes to deal with. It's close to my house, and all I had to do was pop out, walk a few hundred yards, and feed the chicks three times a day as long as the weather stayed frigid. Was that easy? No. But it was easier than having to drive to do it. I got in the car and set out for the closest box with chicks, at the old Ritchie place. Here's what I'd found back on April 18: 

This morning, April 21, an ominous silence greeted me at the Ritchie box. In the nest were two unhatched eggs and a three-day-old chick, cold and still as death. Death, in fact, was all that lay ahead for this poor chick. It might already be too far gone. I turned it over in my hand, felt it for any sign of life. 

        

I picked it up and moved its legs and wings. It wasn’t stiff, so it might not be dead. Without even thinking about it, I dropped the chick down the front of my shirt, into the warm pocket of what amounts to my cleavage. Careful not to squish the chick with the seat belt’s shoulder strap, I headed my car toward the township road where the rest of my nestboxes waited to be checked. I checked a box that could have chicks—still eggs. Heaving a sigh of relief, I pressed on to the next stop. As I neared it, I felt a stirring on my chest. Was it just my imagination, or was that stone-cold chick squirming? 

              

Agog, I reached into my shirt and brought the chick out. Once yellowish and blue, its skin was flushed with pink, and it was moving weakly. However many times I deploy the bracubator, I will never quite get over the magic it can do. I never tire of feeling life come back into a tiny bird, lying so close to my heart. I crooned to the little thing, wiped a tear away, and put it back in my bra to cook awhile more. I had more boxes to hit, and a heavy day with three appointments in town besides. It's kind of weird how busy and hard life can become for someone who loves birds like I do. I feel responsible for them to an abnormal extent.

My charge safe within its little pocket, I fought my way up a steep snowy bank to a nestbox put up by my late friend Jeff Warren. It wasn’t really part of my trail, but I felt I had to check it anyway, to see if anyone needed help. I was shocked to find six—SIX!! newly hatched chicks, barely alive and nearly as cold as the first one. Their mother was nowhere to be found. Oh, no. No no no. I placed them in a grass nest in the picnic cooler, which was near 100 degrees inside thanks to the hot water bottles. 

 

This was a fine kettle of fish. I’d gone from zero to seven bluebirds to care for in less than 15 minutes.

 

As luck would have it, I had deliberately scheduled this Wednesday with three appointments in town, reasoning that I wouldn’t be able to do much orchard clearing or lawnmowing if it was snowing. It hadn’t occurred to me when I scheduled this day that I might be busy saving bluebird lives. 

 

Well, they would just have to come to town with me. I had food for them. All I had to do was find more hot water along the way. This proved to be easier said than done. It came home to me that grocery store bathrooms almost never have hot water in the bathroom sink, which is kind of gross when you think about it. I finally found some reasonably hot water at an Indian restaurant, where I ordered two takeout dinners for myself, knowing that I wouldn’t have time to cook in the next few days. The cooler had lost almost all its heat when I finally replenished it in the restaurant’s restroom. I also fed the babies there. You do what you must. 

 

It was a hectic day. I had several out of body moments, one in the lounge at the auto repair shop, where I barely suppressed laughter as I thought how surprised Larry the Mechanic would be to know that, as he explained about the possible cause of my blinking dash lights, I had six newborn bluebirds squirming away in my bra, each one stuffed full of bug omelet. I hoped there was no security camera. I can only imagine what it all would look like on security video. Phoebe planted that idea in my head, and it made me laugh. I needed the laugh, with the day I was having. 

All this thanks to a couple inches of snow on April 21. 

 

More snow fallout in the next installments.