Counting Blessings

These are a few of my favorite things...

Bindweed flowers, as long as they are not in my garden.

They get their roots pulled up if they try anything there. 

Which only spurs them on to greater heights of vegetative reproduction.

Great big strapping healthy baby bluebirds, raised by hand. Day 42 for the girls.

 I spent pretty much my entire birfday getting a big 15 x 17' flight tent erected in the yard for them. First I had to mow the lawn, because I can't mow once the big tent goes up. Then I had to rake it and while I was at it do some serious weeding. Mil and Fran came over to help and we wound up tying the busted poles on the old tent to trees and stakes. We got her all wired up and pretty strong. Inside: Natural perches, a bath, two food dishes, the whole shebang. It was such fun to capture them and take them outside to their new more spacious digs. And they adore it. They flew around and tried all the new perches and played with the leaves on the branches all afternoon. At dusk I took them into the garage tent because there are coons out there.

They still beg for a little subsidy, though I can tell it's just icing on their cake. They can feed themselves entirely now. We're going to let them get used to the location and being outdoors for a day or two then roll back and tie up the flaps on the big tent and let them explore the yard. The tent has no floor, so they can forage in the grass, and they can also come back inside for mealworms if they need to. And I expect they'll need to. Plus, if the resident yard bluebirds decide they want to beat up my baby girls, the orphans can always come back in their tent...

Yes, I worry. Rehabbers always worry. We worry constantly. I've been working on these birds for three weeks, and I don't fancy having all that thrown aside by a wrong move on my part.

Lessee. I was counting blessings when I got caught up in worrying again. 

I was running with Chet this sparkling clearing morning and he was well ahead of me when I heard a car coming. I put on speed to catch up with him, but I needn't have worried...it was Phoebe, going to work at Bird Watcher's Digest. Of course she stopped to give him some loving.

You can see her thin white arm stretching out to pet him.

We went a little farther and along came Daddeh! I was shooting the fabulous hayroll shadows. Haven't seen shadows in a long time, the clouds have been so thick and the rain so constant. But oh, the lushness. The green.

Chet, clearly wondering who else might come along his road this morning.

Because everybody loves Chet and of course they would stop to tell him he was a good boy. Right?

This dog loves to be admired and photographed. He consciously poses. What a showdog he'd have made, if he were, um, ten pounds lighter. Breed standard gone wild. They're going to make a teacup Boston, mark my word. Show dogs now top out at a meager 13 pounds. And that, to me, is a sacrilege. To me, Chet's beefy, bully perfection. And at 26.5 pounds, he's big enough to make a coyote think twice about carrying him off. Out here, thats a plus.

He still fits on my lap, and that's what counts.

I keep pontificating, taking stances. I was counting blessings...

Knockout roses, having another go. It was too wet for Japanese beetles this year. The roses won.

And the Rudbeckia comes on. Almost time for the indigo buntings to nest. Wonder where they'll go this time?

OK, here's one. A cuphea variety called BATFACE. Yep. Found it again at a farmer's market in Brunswick, Maine while we were looking at Bowdoin College. Yay!

Two twin wild bluebird brothers. I threw the two rotten eggs that they were sitting on into the weeds.  Why their sibling eggs didn't hatch who knows. But they are getting plenty of food as a result.

A sport of Pelargonium "Happy Thought Pink." It has four red petals and one pink. I can see the original, the progenitor of the pink variety, was red! Yippee! Do that again, HFP!!

iPhone camera photos of hummingbirds in mid-air. Yow.

Wham! Zap! Bing! Pow! What is more fun than standing by a hummingbird feeder with your phonecamera? Not much.

So, because I obviously don't have nearly enough flowers at home, I go to Lowe's to buy a new rake, because I am very tough on rakes, having broken several with vigorous raking, and what do I find but a $5 sale on mandevillas including a white one which is sooo pretty. While I'm at it I pick up a $3 tiger-striped canna and a $5  delicate yellow phalaenopsis orchid, because it too must be rescued.

Boston Terriers and Bluebirds

It seemed that my budding friendship with Fran and Mil was meant to be. For when Jeff brought them out to the farm on Sunday morning, they brought the bluebirds, and someone else with them. Someone named Hobo. Hobo's tongue hangs out, but I didn't ask about that, because I figure after eleven years they've long since tired of explaining why. He was a perfectly charming little gent. Mil says he brings Hobo everywhere except "where they sell food."

Hobo is eleven, and he was not at all sure he wanted to consort, canoodle or cavort with the bouncy and insistent Chet Baker, so in Mil's arms he stayed.

Hobo, I just want to smell you all over. Please put your dog down so I can smell him all over, and then show him who is boss. (That's Jeff in the background, smiling at the Tiggerish ridiculousness that is Chet).

  Mil and Fran had brought Hobo along because they said he would want to kiss his baby bluebirds goodbye. 

Which he did. Licked them. No sweeter Boston walks the earth. He made Chet look like some kind of hoodlum. Which he is. Chet's fine with baby birds; he wouldn't hurt them, but as this was going on he was whining and pawing at the outside of the tent, just wanting to get in there and bowl poor little Hobo over. Which wasn't going to happen.

One bluebird sat on Hobo's back for awhile. It was sweet to see. Well, these baby bluebirds would grow up thinking that there are Boston terriers everywhere, I guess.

Chet Baker, who looks like a fullback compared to the more gracile Hobo, ingratiated himself with Fran by leaping up and French-kissing her. She said he reminds her of their first Boston, who was more boisterous than Hobo. Good word, that. Boisterous.

Meanwhile, the baby bluebirds were settling in nicely, investigating their little wading pool, flying circles around the tent, and trying out all the new perches. They're about 25 days old in this photo, still several days from being able to try to pick up their own food. If I remember correctly that happens around Day 28. And then it takes another week or more until they're good at it. I'll continue to hand feed them until they're feeding themselves completely.

I was delighted to find all three are females. This may help give them a smoother release. I raised two orphaned bluebirds in Connecticut years ago. Cobalt was the male, Sapphire the female. Upon releasing them, the resident male bluebird in my yard came and beat the daylights out of Cobalt, driving him from the property. He left Sapphire alone, and she stayed on to be subsidized by my mealworm handouts. I do not think this selective aggression was a coincidence. So I hope that maybe, just maybe, our resident male bluebird will tolerate these three little girls upon their release. I have my fingers crossed. And I'm not going to release them until they're dead ready to be on their own, picking up all their own food.

 It's not perfect, but nothing in avian rehab is really perfect. You do what you must, what you can, and hope for the best. Even from a marsh in Maine. Even when you have a resident pair of bluebirds in your yard who may make life difficult for your orphans. We'll just have to see what happens.

 And outside, Chet Baker was still staring longingly up at Hobo, with a big I-want-that-doggeh-so-badly spitbubble in the corner of his flews. That's my boy.

I cannot believe you photographed me with a spitbubble. Someday I will do the same to you.

Three Baby Bluebirds Come to Stay

I was leading a birding group with Bill for Hog Island Audubon Camp at this glorious marsh at the Damariscotta River Association property near Bremen, Maine when a Facebook message rang into my phone. I hadn't had reception in quite some time, so I glanced at it, feeling a bit foolish as I did so, surrounded as I was by all this useful beauty.

My friend Sherri was asking if I could take three orphaned baby bluebirds. Not right now, I can't. She included the phone number of the couple who had them. A pair had nested in their plastic newspaper delivery box beneath their mailbox, and the female had disappeared, probably hit by a car on their busy road, and then the male disappeared too, and the babies were left cold and unresponsive. I thought for a moment and called Fran, suggesting emergency foods, ways to find rehabilitators, and most importantly, that she call my friend Jeff who has bluebird boxes near mine, and could check both our trails for same-age young in our boxes.

That way, he might be able to put the babies in with other broods. It's called cross-fostering. The adults would adopt them and they'd grow up normally as bluebirds and nobody would have to drop everything and feed them every half-hour. 

Fran called Jeff and Jeff checked his and my boxes and they all had eggs or very young babies. He texted me to that effect. And these orphans were about 12 days old, by the description of their feathering. Rats, rats, rats.

We kept birding and Bill tried to call in a Virginia rail who came very close and called and called but wouldn't let us see him. Still, it was a thrill for the teen campers to be in the presence of an elusive rail, a very mad one. 

Everyone was ready to take its picture if it appeared. But it didn't.

So as I walked the wet meadows with the teen birders I thought about what I could do, all the way from Maine, to help these babies and the kind people who were so concerned for them. 

I called Fran back and told her to keep them warm and feed them kitten chow soaked and mashed with warm water, and some mealworms, and I would take them when I got back. I could tell she was up for it, and I could tell she would do a good job.

And she did.

We spoke a couple of times upon my return from Maine. After a quick trip to Pittsburgh with the family, I could take the birds. I have two weeks at home, which feels like an absolute luxury. Two weeks! I get to stay home! Might as well raise some bluebirds. Because I don't have all that much to do around here...Controlled chaos is my resting state.

This morning, Fran and Mil brought their little charges, which they'd named Winken, Blinken and Nod.

Names that I planned to change, once I got to know them, just because.

Fran and Mil had given over their downstairs bathroom to the birds, papering the floor with newspaper, and putting up perches for them to fly to. You do what you must, and they didn't want to cage them.

It was immediately clear that they had formed strong bonds with the baby bluebirds, and had given them good food and lots of love and attention. The birds looked great, strong, healthy, calling and flying well. Not caging them: Good call. 

So this morning, Sunday, I got up early and set up the Bat Tent, which doubles as a mighty fine Bird Tent. Because it is hopelessly flimsy and we have daily thunderstorms this summer, I saved myself a lot of worry about its being crumpled up and blown across the county and set it up in the garage, as I do for my overwintering bats. I covered the floor with newspapers and set up some plant stands and lattices for perches, even put a bluebird box in there with soft nesting material inside, in case they wanted to return to the womb. I put a dish of shallow water on a plant stand for drinking and bathing. And took over as mother to three baby bluebirds. More anon...