Zick's Bluebird Survival School: Update on Our Alumni

I'm sweating. I just finished planting my snap beans, which means it's warm enough to do such a thing at long last, on May 24. The cold, miserable early May we endured is a nasty memory now, though I still start my morning walks with long pants and a decent jacket.  I have been collecting sweet reminders of the work I did in the first three days of May, to save some little souls when the weather turned horrible and the skies opened up for three straight days.

I coined the term "Perma-rain" while watching this sluggish and apparently endless storm factory squatting over us.

The only way it changed was to get bigger, pumping continuous rain over the chilled land.

Out by the oilwell at the end of my meadow, five baby bluebirds had just hatched on May 1. This was the first box I visited, and I had a syringe of warm baby bird formula against my chest as I trudged out, bundled in a down jacket. It was that cold. 

When it's that cold, parent bluebirds can't find insects for their babies, so I stepped in to supplement. Liam made this video for me on May 2. These were lucky birds, just a long walk down the meadow from my house.

But there were more out on the county roads, and I gathered my gear and steeled myself for what I knew I'd find this frigid wet morning. The first box I checked out on my trail on May 2, next to a little Methodist churchyard cemetery, broke my heart clean in two.  Five bluebird lives, wasted by the rain. I got there too late to save them.

It's a hard photo to look at, but I want you to understand what motivates me, because I'm sure a lot of people think crazy, running around hand-feeding bunches of baby bluebirds in their boxes. Maybe that's crazy in some people's books. Should I just shrug and say, "Tough luck!" to the 27  baby bluebirds that I knew were in my boxes when the weather turned horrible? C'est la vie, this is what happens to early nests?

Should I pretend I don't know what's happening in those boxes?  Or should I do something crazy and try to save them all?

 I'm not crazy. I prefer to think of it as an overdeveloped sense of responsibility to the birds nesting in my boxes. As it turned out, these were the only ones that died due to weather, but for me, that was five too many. I knew I'd lose all the rest if I didn't act.

Bug omelet is baked ground eggshell, egg, milk, dried flies from Carolina Biological Supply

all fried up. Very stanky, but it brings baby bluebirds back to life toot sweet!

I fed bug omelet to all the babies on my trail on May 2 and 3, three times a day, until I had to leave at 1:30 on May 3 to work at the New River Birding and Nature Festival in Fayetteville WV. Talk about cutting it close! It stopped raining and started to warm up only late the afternoon of May 3, and the weather somehow magically held until I got back. If we'd had another day of rain and 40's, with me away, they might have died, and all that work and all these little lives would have gone to waste. 

What I'm going to do now is take you around to the nestboxes with babies, and show you what was in there on May 2, and then I'll show you what happened with each of those broods. This post has taken me days to put together and write--very nitpicky work. I hope you enjoy it.

These five babies along my township road were the very first to hatch, and too old to feed! I shot this photo through the entry hole. They were too suspicious; they might have jumped out of the box had I opened it and tried to feed them. So I left a jar lid of mealworms on the roof of the box, and the parents completely ignored the food for a day and a half.  D'oh!!! How to get food to them? OK. Maybe food on the roof of the box just doesn't make sense to them. On the second day, I placed a fresh dish of wriggly mealworms on the ground underneath the box, and THAT made sense to the adults. They emptied it three times, stuffing those starving babies full. I was elated!

Still kickin' May 3 and finally stuffed with food--they're going to make it! I left a huge slug of mealworms for them right before I left for WV. :)

When I returned from the New River festival on May 8, these lovelies had fledged.  I cleaned the box, and Mom has built a fresh nest as of May 26. On we go!

Next box: When I got way down on Whipple Run the morning of May 2, I found these three sick skinny babies, badly dehydrated from eating earthworms. When it's cold and rainy you'll see birds foraging in the middle of the pavement, picking up earthworms. I'll always wonder how robins thrive on them, because they're a horrible food for bluebirds. Earthworms give bluebirds dysentery. The neat little white fecal sacs that baby birds normally produce fail to form and the nest quickly becomes soaked with wet feces. Chilling follows. Nestling bluebirds fed earthworms in cold wet weather are among the most miserable creatures I know.

The thing, then, is to give them something better than earthworms. Bug omelet and mealworms to the rescue! And a fresh clean nest of dried hairgrass! Muuuch better than the sodden filthy poop-soaked mess they were huddled on. I could feel their relief at being fed and clean at last.

Here they are on May 3, after the nest change and gobs of egg food. I also left huge amounts of mealworms in a jar lid atop the box, and the adults wasted no time in stuffing their babies full. 

What a difference a day, abundant food and a dry nest can make!

And LOOK at them on May 8! Would you ever believe these are the same birds as the ones in the video?

Ahh, they're so beautiful when they're healthy. And that's the impetus, that's the reason I do this--I know I can save them, and the rewards are so very clear and rich, that I am compelled to do it. I see in my mind's eye what they could become and I can't stop until we get there.

Third box: In a nearby box on Stark Hollow Road, more babies were subsisting on earthworms. In this dimly lit photo, you can see the chick on the right has a dead worm pasted across both its nostrils, which must be very uncomfortable. It had tried to swallow it--the two ends of the worm were in its mouth--but it got looped across then dried on.

I took them out of the box, peeled off the worm, and found more earthworm gunk cemented to its sibling's left eye. (middle bird in the photo below). I peeled that off, too. I have to wonder what would have happened had I not removed it. These chicks are developing so fast you do NOT want anything stuck to their vital parts. These photos taken May 2.

I got the idea to prop my cellphone on the steering wheel so I could make a decent video of me feeding Bug Omelet to the babies. This is straightforward, and easy.

What's not easy is having to force-feed babies who won't gape. I have only two or three chances to feed these birds in a day. Each round takes me an hour and a half to complete, getting around to all the boxes. 

I'm not taking "No thank you" for an answer. You're getting fed each round, Pipsqueak, and you're going to eat as much as all your siblings. No time for your finicky stuff.

Followup: Here is the same nestful of five down in Stark Hollow, on May 8. They're out of danger and beautiful. 

Fourth box: The Eddy nest got started early, and the babies were ready for mealworms by the time I got there on May 2. (Babies can't digest the chitin on the larvae until they're at least a week old, which is why I have to feed bug omelet to most of them). I started them off with bug omelet the first day and then left gobs of mealworms atop the box for the parents to divvy out. 

What a beautiful sight greeted me on my return May 8.

The Eddy babies were old enough to sex by the color of their wings. Bet you can tell which are the males. There are three, two of them showing lots of blue, and the lone female is touching my thumb. See how gray her wing is by comparison? It's easy to sex 12 day old babies.

Now, Box 1 again. Back to those babies out by my oilwell, the first ones I fed...

Here they are on May 9, plump and fit. 

Day 9 Oilwell box

By May 11, they were feathering out...

Day 11 Oilwell

and on May 15, I could see that all four were females. What riches!

Day 15 four females Oilwell

These little darlings fledged somewhere around May 20. Phewww! Relief.

All told, there were 21 more baby bluebirds in the world than there would have been had I not intervened. No question in my mind that these babies would have died in that cold rain. I lost five, but kept 21 going until the weather warmed, and that felt really good. 

This is the fourth spring in a row that I've had to feed bluebirds in their boxes. In 2020, I fed them a total of nine days in April and May (Thank God I didn't have to go to WV that year--I'd have lost them all). 2020 is the year by which all others will be measured. Remember all those starving orioles and tanagers and kingbirds that showed up at people's feeders? Yeah. That was 2020. 

2021 was almost as bad. 2022 had only one day of hideousness. 2023 had three. 

Every. Dang. Year. 

The climate is changing so fast, and we are all caught with our pants down. Extremes are extremier. Springs in the Midwest are late and cold and wet as sin now. The normally gray and rainy Pacific Northwest has fried; California has drowned. And the hurricanes down South...well, I guess I'll take the horrible Mays out here in the middle. I'll be thankful it isn't any worse. 

Signing off from CrazyTown,

Yours,

JZ

Placing the Miracle Chick- Part 5

On the frigid, rainy morning of April 29, I went out to check my boxes, leave mealworms on the roofs for the adults and stuff any young hatchlings with egg food. Then I made a beeline to R's house, to give Miracle Baby its first feeding out of the incubator. Oh, it was hungry, but it was strong, and I had a good feeling about this bird. As an embryo it had already been through so much. It wanted to live!

I fed it four times before creeping up to Warren 1 and slipping it in alongside five near-term eggs. I also included a pipping egg from the cold clutch, hoping it might hatch successfully. It was the best I could do. 

Here's how the hatchling looked the next afternoon, April 30. I was delighted to see it plump and pink. 

Four of Warren 1's five eggs wound up hatching on May 2. The pipping egg from the cold clutch died in the shell, not surprisingly. So our Miracle Baby would be three days older than its foster siblings. I had to have faith it would all work out, because at this point I was out of options. What a sigh of relief, to have my last orphan in good bluebird care.

Here are the newborn Warren 1's, with a great big Miracle Baby asleep on the upper left on May 2.

Here's Miracle Baby on May 5, with a couple of its foster siblings. Bigger, even showing the beginnings of pinfeathers on its wings, but not hideously out of the ballpark. I'm hoping for the best.

The bluebirds occupying Warren 1 are great parents--they're the ones who divebomb me every time I approach the box. But Mrs. Warren 1, I will aver, is a lousy nest builder. So while I was there checking on Miracle Baby, I took her brood and her crappy little nest out, and you could see right through the bottom of it!

The whole thing was crawling with chicken mites, too! Ack! This box seems always to host them. They likely hide in the crevices over the winter.

I put the babies in a white tissue nest while I drenched the box interior with Glass Plus and swabbed it out with paper towels, and made a fresh nest from dried tufted hairgrass that I gather in my meadow. While I worked, the mites on the chicks crawled off onto the tissues--don't know why they do that, but it always works! 

Then I replaced them in a nice cushy fresh grass nest, in a virtually mite-free box. Sigh of relief.

Speaking of sighs of relief, here's Roquefort Eddy, the tiny skinny orphan that Curtis sniffed, on April

30, surrounded by the infertile eggs of their foster mother. I removed them after I took this photo. 

THIS is a FAT baby bluebird! Here's Roquefort Eddy on May 2, growing like a weed!

Little Roquefort Eddy grew and grew, and by May 5, I could tell it was a boy. 14 days old here, and he got a new nest, too, because his had mites. That was a little tricky--he squawked and shrilled and leapt out of the box, whoops! Zick! Remember your own damn rules! I laughed and caught him, stuffed some paper towels atop him, finished cleaning the box and making the nest, and installed him in it. Just to be safe I stuffed the box opening with paper towels until I was sure he had settled down. Crept up, removed them--all was still. Roquefort Eddy stayed put. A successful, if way too late in the game, nest change!

Meanwhile, Roquefort's mother, who had abandoned the brood of 6 newly hatched chicks farther down the same road on April 21, had started over.

She's incubating 5 eggs as of May 12. Hey, no judgement, Mrs. Eddy. You have more sense than I do.

(And as I revise this on June 10, those eggs all hatched and have all fledged and she's feeding them. I'm going to bet she goes for Round 3. Wish her luck.)

I stopped at the little Methodist church and had a chat with my old friend Jeff, who'd put up the bluebird boxes I was now messing around with. I know he'd be bemused and amused and befuddled by my overcommittment to these birds. But he'd also be intensely interested, and learning right alongside me. He wouldn't read my blog, much as I wished he would, but oh, we'd be yakking. I miss those chats. I'm grateful I get to see his fine brother Jay now and then while I'm cruising the bluebird trail. We're both too busy, but we find time to catch up.

That's a bluebird box, a turkey, a John Deere, and a boombox on his stone--some of the things he loved. I adore the concept and the art on these storytelling stones.

Back home, I was actively subsidizing two more broods of bluebirds, the first to hatch on my trail. Here's how the oldest brood looked April 30. It was pretty easy to help them--I just walked out a few times a day, leaving a crock of mealworms on the roof of the box. The adults took care of the actual feeding. Man, they were happy to see me first thing on a wet, freezing, rainy morning! 

They still appear out of nowhere whenever they see me, hoping for mealworms. Their babies fledged on May 4 at the age of 19 days, and the adults are keeping them nearby, and were still accepting handouts as of May 12. It brings me joy to help them along. I'd much prefer warm nights and sunny days, and not having to buy mealworms by the 3,000 lot, but they're well worth the effort. I get my mealworms from Tim at thenaturesway.com   Always highest quality and fast shipping, and far more affordable than pet store worms!

In the yard, another box is fledging as I write on May 12, even with 32 degree night temperatures. You can be sure the adults are eager to see me pop out the door each morning!

And the Ritchie baby, left for dead by its mother on April 21? It's the big male at the bottom of this photo. Isn't that beautiful? He fledged along with his broodmates from the Hendershot nest somewhere around May 8. I still remember him, stone cold, but beginning to squirm in my bra on April 21. I call the incubator chick the Miracle Chick, but they're all miracles to me, surviving in this cruel spring.

My batting average--three chicks fostered and saved out of seven chicks and five eggs taken in--isn't anything to brag about. But I'm sure the additional broods I fed and subsidized are in far better shape than they would have been without the feedings. They may not have made it at all without the subsidy. 

 As much work as it's been--and it has been all-consuming--it is good and sweet and right to know there are bluebirds out there who wouldn't be on the earth without my help. I'm not sure I'd want to do this all again. Nah, I definitely don't want to have to do this again. 

But then again, with the weather the way it has been these past two springs, and my heart in the shape it's in, I'm not sure I have a choice. Sometimes it snows in April. 

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. 

Making a Chickadee's Mattress

I have been so very busy with bluebirds of late...have left some teasers about fostering orphans on Instagram and Facebook, and I'm sorry about that, but the story is still unfolding and I am learning so much! I hope to pass it along soon--I've been keeping careful notes. Today, with work and springtime and grounds and house maintenance all smashing me, I don't have time for a bluebird story so I'll tell you a little chickadee story. I haven't been to the grocery store for two whole weeks, had to dig out a frozen pizza last night. But a Science Chimp has to blog!

I have had a pair  of Carolina chickadees nesting for the past few years in a tiny slot box along my driveway. I suspect it's the same female at least, because she has a habit of building a nice, deep, soft nest, then digging allll the way down to the floor of the box until she's clean out of nesting material. Let's call her Digger.

There's something about knowing this bird, and knowing she is going to do this every year, that brings me a little glow inside. Mostly because I love knowing it's her, in all her quirky sweetness, and because I always helping out.

I peeked in Digger's nest on April 18 and there were six beautiful tiny eggs. To the untrained eye, all looks well. 

Because my eye is trained, I could see, even in the dim interior of the box, that the eggs were in a peculiar order and spaced much too far apart for efficient incubation.  And why is the background so dark? No no no. She's laid them on the bare wood floor of the box again!

To confirm, I lifted the nest.  Mm hmmm.  Welp, we have to do something about this situation, and fast! Baby chickadees, born on hard bare wood, are at certain risk of splayed leg joints that could make for severe disability as they grow.  Luckily, I check my boxes often, and working backward, I see that I found this sorry situation on the first day of their incubation. 

I took the nest out. Oh for Pete's sake. The most important part of the nest--its cup-- is not even there!

Now, why would a bird as smart as a Carolina chickadee do something this apparently dumb, year after year?

I have thought about it, and I think it's the fault of the box. Designed to thwart house sparrows, who like a deep, dark nest cavity, this box was deliberately made shallow, with a slot opening to let in lots of light. A chickadee, like a house sparrow, feels safer in a deep nest cavity, so her instinct tells her to keep digging and building downward. She hits bottom way too soon in this shallow slot box, but by then it's too late, and she's laying her eggs. Poor wee thing. It's not her fault, it's mine. As usual. So it's mine to rectify.

Every spring, before the grass really gets green and growing, I go out and gather dried hair grass in my meadow. I believe the species is tufted hair grass, Deschampsia cespitosa, though I am always happy to be corrected. It's my favorite grass, not just because it is elegant and beautiful, but because it's so useful. I carefully curate the patches of it in my prairie meadow, and they have grown and expanded. I love it because its dried winter blades make such a fabulous bed for baby birds. I gather clumps of the dried stuff and put them in feed sacks for use all spring and summer long. When you are seriously into bird ranching, you value fine, soft bedding, because you wind up having to replace nests when they get infested by parasites, soiled, or wet. Mites, blowflies, nasty stuff, too much rain--all can make a nest sodden and stinky and downright dangerous, and I don't hesitate to jump in and replace such nests with fresh new grass, packed and wound tightly in the box.

 You don't want just any grass--it must be fully dried and cured, and it must be absolutely free of anything sharp, stiff, or pokey. 

So I gather dried tufted hairgrass by the armload before it rots in April. 

I cuddled the eggs in a temporary nest of hair grass while I worked.

I went to my handy sack of hair grass and pulled out a wad, from which I made a chickadee mattress. I added some dry moss to make it more like something the chickadee would make herself. I wadded and wound it tightly to try to foil The Digger, and installed it on the floor of her box.

I'm holding the original nest so you can see the giant hole in the bottom. The new Tempur-Pedic is installed in the shallow slot box.

You see the problem. She has nowhere to dig to!

It's so hard to believe there will be birds inside these fingernail-sized eggs, but there will! Just have to wait 12-14 days! I installed them on their new springy soft mattress and carefully replaced the original nest.

And on May 2, c'est voila! Three-day old Carolina chickadees, five of them, off to a much better start than they would have been otherwise. Lucky babies, lucky Digger, lucky me!

Happy spring! Help the birds.