The Song Sparrows Stayed!

A wild song sparrow sings in Fairyland. 

This is the most current installment in the story of three orphaned song sparrows I raised upon receiving them August 30, 2021. You can find the prior three by scrolling down or hitting "Older Post." 

 The challenge I would face going forward was keeping track of my three song sparrow babies, who were, amazingly enough, hanging around through the autumn and early winter! 

This was worthy of note because I don't often have song sparrows here in winter--they seem to clear out. So to have three hanging around, and those being birds I'd raised, was an embarrassment of riches for me. 

I had expected them to take off soon after release, but they didn't. Fall migration time was already in full swing when they were hatched, for crying out loud--they fledged on August 31. 

As I thought more about it, it occurred to me that perhaps they were up against a metabolic wall. For no sooner had their juvenile plumage grown in than they--perhaps prompted by shorter daylength and the ebb in hormones that produces--began to molt it out. There were little feathers all over the fledging tent. They looked scruffy as could be. 

And it occurred to me that they may have been in no shape to attempt fall migration. Perhaps they had no choice but to stay the fall and winter with me here. Just born too late.

That was fine with me. I could help them through the winter. 

Baby, October 12, 2021. This is such a classic Baby pose. 

Lots of pinfeathers over her eye!

Baby, October 17, 2021. Still showing pinfeathers under the eye (click on photo to see).

About a zillion photos later, I finally got two of them together. 

Imagine my surprise and delight when both Baby and Ball showed up together in the side yard on December 16, 2021! This is a crummy picture, but you can make out the fault bars on both their tails.

It had to be Baby and Ball, because Bob had lost his first tail to a chipmunk, and had grown in a perfect one.

What better Christmas present could there be than Ball, singing away on December 26,  2021, down along the meadow edge?

My baby boy is singing!! And I caught him at it! See the little pale bar on his tail?? That's diagnostic of my hand-raised babies. He looks wonderful, doesn't he?

When the ice storm hit in February, somebody turned up tailless. Oh jeez. Ice will pull out bird tails. It happens. I didn't know who it was. One of the three. Maybe Baby. Maybe Bob, again. Feb. 5, 2022

Whoever it was liked to hang out close to the studio window. How sweet!!

I'm kinda leaning toward Bob here. Feb. 6, 2022. Telling song sparrows apart with neither bands nor bar-marked tails is above my pay grade. I try, but I'm never sure. 

They liked dried mealworms, and I was only too glad to toss more out the window. 

Grow that little tail back, fast!!

And then, after I photographed the tailless one, here came one with a bar-marked tail, sitting right in the Zick Dough feeder, pigging out! Ball? Is that you? Baby?? I'm lost. 

All I know is you're one of mine. And you're either Baby or Ball. If I can photograph you singing, I'll know you're Ball, because I'm pretty sure Baby's a female. Feb. 5, 2022

And so it goes for a Science Chimp and bird mom, forever watching, scrutinizing, photographing. Obsessively confirming, over and over, yes, you still draw breath, my dear ones.

It would be ever so much easier if I could band them, wouldn't it?

It's good to be pretty much caught up, to have followed these three for six months!

What a gift! 

I am looking forward to tracking down and photographing any song sparrow that sings, hops or scratches

on my place as spring comes on. I sure hope to see one with a marked tail. Maybe two.

You never know what little present awaits when you walk out the door. 

Latest sightings: Ball(?) turned up in the ZickDough feeder for the Great Backyard Bird Count on Feb. 19. I was so happy to see him. And he's been singing his distinctive scratchy song right under my bedroom window, Feb. 19 and 20 at first hint of light. He sings once, then takes off from his night roost in the blue spruce by the fishpond and sings farther down in the back, below the fallen willow. What a wonderful start to my day, to hear a bird singing who I've known since he was 8 days old!

On Feb. 24, Ball sang from the steps of my front porch. Oh, how I hope he establishes a territory and stays to breed here! 

Speaking of gifts...On the 28th of September, I was sitting in my lawn chair, clicking away at the babies as they fed on the sidewalk, when someone else came hopping up. My eye, well trained, knew instantly that this was no song sparrow. Please click on the photos to see the fine penciling of a gorgeous fall Lincoln's sparrow, come down from the squishy bogs of the North Country to grace my yard, and feed on millet for one glorious September morning. 

Such are the gifts of being outside, and looking closely. Swoon! Feast your eyes on that ochre wash across malar and breast! The clean gull-gray above the eye! That white belly! Oh, what a bird!

Release the Song Sparrows!

Mmm. Pupae. 33 day old Baby, front, and Ball, behind, Sept. 23

If you're just picking up this story, please scroll down and check out the first two installments in the tale of the rehab and release of the song sparrows I took in August 30, 2021. It was a process!

Once the three orphaned song sparrows were used to flying up to a pedestal to feed, I switched to topping it with a large flat board. All these changes took place over the week and a half they were in the tent. I wanted them to be completely comfortable with the feeding setup before they were released. Once they were reliably feeding on the board-topped pedestal, they were ready to go. It was September 17, and they were 27 days old. I had chosen this day for release because Margaret Morse Nice, Ohio song sparrow guru and author of one of the finest single-species studies ever done, wrote that the longest she’d ever observed her subjects feeding their young was Day 27. So be it. 

 

I opened the tent at 11:15. Baby sunbathed in the unaccustomed bright rays, but the birds acted as though they didn’t notice the open sky, now revealed with the screen rolled back. At 12:14 pm, Bob was the first to fly out, leaving Ball and Baby stunned and standing still at the mouth of the tent. It was a beautiful warm calm day, perfect for them to get their bearings outdoors. At 12:45 pm, Baby flew out into the driveway. 

She was gone for a few moments, then she flew back into the garage and tried to get back into the tent. She changed her mind and flew to the nearby forsythia. All the while, Ball stood and watched. He was still sitting at the open end at 1:20 pm. He was terribly conflicted, and spending a lot of time foot-staring and hiding in the folds of the tent. There was no sign of the two released birds. I calmed myself, saying they’d be back when they got hungry. 2:15: Ball still lingered in the tent.  At 2:53, he made a straight flight out the door and hid under my car in the driveway. I set up the pedestal where he could see it, well stocked with millet and mealworms. I kept hearing rustling in the roses along the garage, but I didn’t see any of my babies from 3 pm until it was too dark to see. 

 

It was Terrible. The first 12 hours or so of most of my bird releases are usually pretty stressful. I went to bed at 10 pm and woke at 1:30, worrying, and that was it for me. I was so impatient for the dawn. At 7 am I walked out, calling, and Baby popped up in the rose hedge! I threw millet all over the sidewalk, mealworms too, and two birds—Ball and Baby-- came down to eat at long last. What an awful ordeal, waiting for evidence that they were still alive. It’s often thus with releasing birds. You have to have faith, and every hour that ticks by tests that faith. 

Around 11:40, a third bird came flying from the prairie patch across the yard. It was Bob! I’d heard him giving the chimp note over there most of the day. Finally, they were all together, and they fed atop the pedestal feeder I’d set up by the forsythia. Whewww!! 

 

What a relief! By mid-morning, the babies were coming to the pedestal, which I'd set up next to the forsythia where they spent a lot of time. I left the good stuff out for them there! Here, Baby and Ball feast on mealworm pupae (freshly molted, of course, and tender). 

Just look at the size difference here. Baby's in front, but so much smaller and more delicate than hulking Ball. Also note the angle of her tail--she always carried it high.

Baby and Ball were almost always together, as they had been in the cage and in the fledging tent. It was a comfort to see their bond persisting after release. 

                                                       Baby and Ball at the pedestal.

Ball was well-named. He was roundish, and he had finer streaking as a juvenile than Baby .

Ball, Sept. 25, '21

I stayed out with them all that first day. It is my habit to stay out with newly released birds, to give them a sense of continuity, so they know I will continue to provide for them. Toward dusk, Baby and Bob went to roost in the forsythia, while Bob, ever the loner, flew across to the prairie patch. He was to keep this pattern for the rest of the autumn. Alone among the three, though, Bob would spook around the front door, the studio hummingbird garden and the bird baths. It was always lovely to look down and see him as I worked. I often wondered if his willingness to come into my spaces was because he had spent time on my shoulder as a brand new fledgling. He sought me out.

20 Sept. Bob tries his first sunflower heart under the feeder! He also stripped crabgrass seeds as though he'd been doing it all his life. My mother bird's heart almost burst with pride!

And that same day, I snapped his portrait by my granite snapping turtle. How cute is he? 

Bob, in the grass Liam calls "Witch's Hair" on Sept. 23, 2021

He was 33 days old. Such a handsome little guy.

Ball eats a moth, Sept. 28

Ball, Oct. 1, '21. This photo makes me smile. He was such a round little fella as a youngster.

 

Baby, Oct. 17, '21. Baby carries herself low, and often cocks her tail upward. Always has. 

I fell into a pattern of taking my camera and binoculars out each morning when I filled the feeders on the pedestal. I'd sit in a lawn chair, taking my tea, watching for the babies, and I'd shoot as many photos as I could. It was lovely, like a morning meditation. My chair was perennially wet from the morning dew, so I took a towel out with me to spread before I sat down.  

                             

I like to think it gave them a sense of peace and comfort to have a large anthropoid ape, one they knew, watching over them as they fed. 

They were also completely comfortable with Curtis, who made it his job to keep the chipmunks away from the seed I spread on the sidewalk.

                                 

Still, we couldn't protect them every minute. 

On this shot from Sept. 19, you can see the pale fault bar band across Bob's tail. All three babies showed this band, which was formed when they suffered a day of deprivation when their nest was destroyed, before I took them in on August 30. The feather growth was interrupted, and manifests as a pale line.

Bob fills up at the pedestal feeder, Sept. 24, '21

On Sept. 29, Bob turned up tailless! I blame the chipmunks who were always lurking in the rudbeckia/rose hedge along the sidewalk. Not a fan of the striped ones.

Oct. 1, 2021--Bob is already showing the start of a new tail! Four days of growth and he's already showing a stub! I knew he'd grow it back, and sure enough, within three weeks you'd never know he'd been without. The only thing that wasn't great about this was that I'd lost the key marker--the fault bar across his baby tail feathers--that I'd been relying on to distinguish him from the wild song sparrows. As they got sleek and beautiful, I had to rely on the fact that all three of my babies were still undergoing face and head molt in mid October, while any visiting song sparrow would have long since finished molting. There were still a few pinfeathers on Bob's face when I snapped him with his beautiful new red tail on Oct. 17.

Bob at the bonsai pool by the front door, Oct. 21, 2021

Bob loved to bathe! Maybe that's why he was always sleeker than his siblings. He probably thought they were gross, so he kept to himself. 

One of the really cool things that happened during this lovely September/October idyll was that two wild male song sparrows showed up and hung out with the babies. This is one I called  Chops, for his big muttonchop markings.

Chops can hardly believe the fare my three orphans were getting

 and helps himself! 

The bird below I called Wilder.

 Both sang around the yard, which is why I knew they were males.

Wilder, October 3, 2021

Because the babies weren't afraid of me, these two wild song sparrows decided I must be all right. 

They were so crisp and beautifully smooth, in contrast to the scruffy juveniles. I enjoyed getting to know the wild ones, who fed among the three babies, unconcerned about me sitting just a dozen feet away.

I remember that period as one of peace and contentment, watching my sparrows go a little wilder each morning, before their mama's eyes.

 

Florence Nightingale, Meet Elmer Fudd: Still Helping Goldfinches

Well, folks, I'm still at it, doctoring, feeding, and cleaning up after --would you believe it--a total of 17 American goldfinches, installed in five different cages around my house. Capacity is at an all-time high as of this writing on March 26, and I'm actually blogging about it now so I don't forget in the excitement of the coming week, when I get to release a bunch of them at long, long last! My "morning practice" of heading out to see the sun rise has, since February 20 when I caught my first sick goldfinch, been replaced by janitorial duties. That's OK. I just postpone the hike with Curtis until they've been fed, medicated and watered. 

Since I wrote "Caught in the Whirlpool," admissions have slowed but not entirely halted. In the last three days, I've caught two more, and I have my eye on a little female who can still see well enough to evade me.

The huge flock of goldfinches--60  or more--that deposited these waifs at my doorstep is long gone. The tube feeders that attracted them are, too, likely never to be used again. I really want out of this loop, but I'm much more sanguine about it now that I have some releases coming up and recruitment of patients has slowed to a trickle. This is a typical scenario for me in the past month or so...

I make a delicious lunch of cranberry pecan chicken salad over tower-grown lettuce and head down to the new patio with a happy sigh to consume it in the spring sunshine. Self-care, yep! I'm doing it today!

And while I am sitting there, before I even get to take the first bite, the unbelievable occurs again...

a blinded goldfinch flutters down to the patio. This is the second time this has happened. 

How is a bird rehabber to get anything to eat? 

I put my salad on the terrace wall and advance.

 Can I document the hand-capture of a wild American goldfinch two times in a row?  It really helps when they're finally and totally blind. But I have to say, I am mystified and enchanted by the fact that two blinded birds--both females-- have raised the white flag and come to me when I least expected it. 

I got the bulk of my patients by creeping up on the tube feeders and snatching them off their perches. It was pretty easy to block their dim view of me using the feeder posts. After I took the tube feeders down, having made the connection between the feeder ports and disease transmission,  I had to get craftier.

I took to using my koi net, which has a long, telescoping handle. This is a really groovy way to catch the birds, since you don't have to get right up on top of them to nab them. I owe this Elmer Fudd video tribute to Shila Wilson, who, unbeknownst to me, was standing in the studio and ready with her iPhone when I grabbed the opportunity to try to catch an extremely elusive bird. Shh. Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. I'm hunting Gowdfinches!

Don't know about you, but I find this video unintentionawwy hiwawious. Something about the way there's nothing happening, and then this black net just cweeps in from stage left...and then you have me, so totawwy focused on the stalk...it's just hiwawious. And perfect that I didn't catch the little blighter after all that trouble.

Another bird who gave me the swip again and again is this one. I kept cweeping up on him with my Fuddnet, and he kept swipping out from under it wike quicksiwver. When I finawwy got him I was ewated! 

I named this bird Mr. Netinyahoo, because he was so hard to catch.

           

I'm sure Mr. Netinyahoo is a career criminal. Just look at that shifty face. He's plotting even as I grip him in my Gentle Cobra grasp. I'd only had him for a day when I opened his Pet Taxi to re-up his food and water and he flipped right out the door. Straight up to the clerestory windows he went, well above the reach of hand or net. 

That meant only one thing. I would have to bring the dreaded 17' extension ladder into the living room. 

This ladder is very heavy and unwieldy, and getting it in the front door is an adventure in cussing and trying not to not break something (window; Hoosier cabinet, mirror, lamp...) Luckily, once a goldfinch picks a window to flutter against, they tend to stay there.  Unlike hummingbirds, which rapidly switch windows, making you set the ladder up several times before you finally are able to nab them. You can see the tiny dark blip of Mr. Netinyahoo's head in the middle clerestory. Obviously this isn't my first rodeo, catching birds in the clerestory windows. 

I tried a bunch of times to extend the ladder but it kept collapsing. No way was I going to extend that thing only to have it suddenly retract and send me to the floor. So I said a prayer that I'd be able to reach him with the ladder unextended, called Shila to tell her I was about to do something dumb, and climbed up. At least somebody a half hour away by car would know I'd fallen... I caught him handily and started my descent. I couldn't see the underslung last step as I came down and missed it. Tumbled into a straw ottoman which nicely broke my fall. I rolled a bit, holding my precious cargo high in my right hand. He was unharmed, and so was I! But his little eyes were both screwed shut, which I found very touching. He probably thought he was toast when I went down.

And there may be yet a third way to catch a goldfinch. I'm getting cwaftier and cwaftier! I recently installed a New and Improved Secret Studio Feeder, which avid readers and social media followers will remember from 2017, when Jemima visited it for chicken breast, basmati rice, pecans, sugar snap peas, raspberries and the like. I went looking for a nice narrow plexi drawer organizer that I could wire up under my crank-out studio window, installed some plastic cups, and now I have a steady stream of awesome birds right up close to enjoy. My idea was to be able to offer some special foods like Zick dough and sunflower hearts to my beloved regulars without attracting big flocks of house and gold finches who would carry disease.

And wouldn't you know, a little female goldfinch with one squinty eye figured out how to get in there and eat. Bless her little heart! Needless to say, I'll be ready when she's finally robbed of her sight. I'm so touched that she spotted the sunflower hearts and had the courage to come in for food. That's a stretch for a goldfinch. They are sweet birds, but they are not innovators, the way titmice, Carolina wrens, blue jays and even chipping sparrows, to name a few, can be.

I am delighted to report that on March 29, this bird's good eye finally closed and I heard her toenails on the plexi of my new feeding station. Oh my gosh, there she was. BUT the screen was in, and the window was closed. Well, it was worth a try. Stealthily, I removed the screen. Still she sat and ate. Even more stealthily, I cranked the window out. The bottom of the window brushed the top of her head as it oh-so-slowly opened. Still she sat! One pounce of the Gentle Cobra and she was mine--the last of the last of the last sick goldfinches, I pray! I was beyond delighted to finally have her in my mitt.

So the saga continues. I sincerely hope to be able to stop running a goldfinch hospital in the nearish future. As is, with the birds I've got, I'll be caring for birds into the third week of April. Good thing I've done my taxes.

And speaking of taxing, I humbly thank you all for reading, and staying with me on this bizarre journey. Special thanks to those of you who have chosen to support my madness with blog donations. You don't have to! I got this! but you are very kind and I am grateful. I keep doing it because I feel terrible that goldfinches seem to be succumbing to the disease, usually mostly the province of house finches, in such alarming numbers this spring. I don't know why that is, or what has changed--has the bacterium mutated? But it's clear that their resistance to this awful disease is poor. 

I keep doing it because I love goldfinches, and if I have had any part in making them ill, I want to make them whole again.

I keep doing it because there's nothing quite like helping a blind bird see again. The only thing that's better than that is seeing a caged bird fly again. To my dear friend Donna I owe this poem excerpt, which she sent me on hearing my caged goldfinch singing. 

Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight. Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, And beauty came like the setting sun. My heart was shaken with tears and horror Drifted away ... O but every one Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Sigfried Sassoon

The best little singer of the bunch really tuned up in the four days before his release. Since his cage was in the foyer, I got to enjoy it all day long from the adjacent studio.

And now, watch that beautiful singer and his female friend go free!