Saving Starlings: Part 2

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  We're standing in a parking lot at the Applebee's in Marietta, Ohio, dithering, on a hot Saturday in May. 

  
  

  Two more baby starlings lay sprawled on the black mulch, under a shrub. Oh man. Cynthia's baby, which she'd stayed up all night to check on, was still at her house, about 10 minutes away. That makes three that had fallen from a single nest. At 8 days, the babies were old enough to be active and crawl around a bit, and had found their way to a gap and fallen through.

  
  

  What a mess. She told me that two little girls had seen these on the ground and been very concerned about them, and moved them under a bush. Well, sure. They're the definition of vulnerability. This explained the food-bearing starlings, sitting on the Dumpster fence, waiting for the coast to clear so they could feed their fallen children. I noted through binoculars that they were hauling cutworms. Good starlings. Not feeding your babies Freedom Fries. Hey, me neither.

  
  

  It was obvious to me and Cynthia that, between the Applebee's customers constantly walking by on dayshift,  taking pity on them and picking them up and (most importantly) keeping nervous parents away from them, and the rats and mice on night shift, these 8-9 day old babies weren't going to make it on the ground. Starlings stay in the nest a very long time--until about Day 24. They leave the nest flying strongly and are completely on their own only a few days later.  One of the great amazements and mysteries of starling nest life that I'm exploring in my upcoming book, Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest. 

  
  

  After speaking with Cynthia for a bit, we both withdrew to see if the parents were still attending a nest, and if so, where that might be. I could hear the low churr of a single baby starling from high up in the awning over the side windows facing the parking lot. 

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

  Sure enough, patient waiting was rewarded with the sight of a parent entering a slit on the metal awning, and the sound of a baby being stuffed with food.

  
  

  There's a house sparrow perched up where the nest zone is, and it also has a nest stuffed in the narrow triangle of space. The starling nest is farther down the awning, at the other end of the metal brace on which  the sparrow's perched. The starlings were entering that slit and tending a precarious nest within.

  
  

  

  
  

  It was far too high to reach, even with a stepladder. 

  We went inside to ask the manager permission to intervene, and ask if he had a cardboard box we could use.

  He returned after some time with a small three-sided box, and the warning that, for liability reasons, we would not be permitted to use a ladder around this establishment. Oh. Hmm. Crap.

  
  

  Being a Meyers Briggs ISTP (The Mechanic), my brain began churning around how to solve this problem without using a ladder. I took off for the Bird Watcher's Digest office, just a few blocks away, and rummaged through the warehouse until I had what seemed like a workable solution. It involved duct tape. You knew it had to. 

  
  

  

  
  

                                                     photo by Liam Thompson

  
  

  My thinking was that I'd securely tape the nestbox to a sort of extension that I could use to attain more height than I could otherwise. I'd load the nestbox up with clean straw off the bales I'd just bought, insert the three baby starlings, and push it up as high under the awning as I could get it, securing it with...you got it. Duct tape. 

  
  

  I brought a small stepstool from the BWD warehouse. The manager didn't like that, and told me not to use it. I told him I was going to anyway, and he could bring me something to sign that released his company from liability if I fell off the stepstool. I think it was clear at that point that I was gonna get those birds up under that awning if I had to grow wings and fly them up there. I climbed on the stepstool and he turned and went back inside. I felt sorry for him. He was doing his job, and he knew crazy bird ladies when he saw them. I'm grateful to him for even allowing us to mess around out there under the awning.

  
  

  While constructing the box at BWD, I messaged Cynthia. 

  
  

  
  
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  Julie Zickefoose I have the nest box made. You need to go get your baby bird and bring some food and water in a dropper to Applebee's.

  Like · Reply · 1 · May 9 at 2:21pm
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  Julie Zickefoose Wait for me I'm just seconds away. I'll tell you the plan and then you need to go get the bird, food and water.

  Like · Reply · 1 · May 9 at 2:22pm
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  Cynthia Starling OK I was thinking that I needed to get him.

  
  

  
  

She drove home and returned with the starling she'd so tenderly cared for the day and night before. She also brought the nightcrawlers she'd bought, and the all-important water dropper. It was a hot, hot day and we needed to get the birds well-hydrated and fed.

I was going to load those babies up as full as I could with nightcrawlers and water so they'd have fortification for the wait they'd have to endure. Fortunately the babies were With The Program. Being starlings, they were ridiculously easy to feed.  Those giant yellow clown lips are a snap to pry open, and once you get food in there, it goes down fast. 

photo by Liam Thompson

Opening the gape. Having a thumbnail helps. You go in from the side, run your nail along the gape opening, then hold the bill open with thumb and forefinger of  your left hand while you stuff food in with your right. It isn't easy, but you can do it.

The thing most people don't realize about baby birds is that they will refuse food from a person, but it's not because they aren't hungry.  They're hungry all the time. That's a given. The most common thing I get from callers is, "I offered him food but he won't eat." They've usually put a dish of birdseed in front of the baby. Or they've dangled a worm in front of its face. And the baby refuses to take either, because it can't. It doesn't have the neural connections to pick up its own food.

 At this point they've given up and are calling me for help, figuring this thing they're trying to save has a death wish. Well, you don't "offer" food to a frightened, debilitated bird. You pry his bill open and stuff it down him until he gets the idea that you're doing him a favor. Only when that light clicks on in his brain, sometimes a few hours to a day later, and he learns to associate you with food and comfort and good things, will he gape for you. It's got to be the right food, of course. No baby bird can eat birdseed or bread, nor can they pick it up themselves even if they could digest it. Scrambled egg. Soaked kibble. Mealworms, stuffed into its mouth. That kind of thing a baby bird will eat.

photo by Liam Thompson

I had to tear the nightcrawlers into pieces. Cynthia was amazed how much the babies could accept. Hey, they're starlings. A starling is a fat bag of guts and poop propelled by stubby wings.

photo by Liam Thompson

The two newly fallen babies were afraid, but the one she'd cared for overnight knew all about the kindness of people. He gaped until he could swallow no more.

photo by Liam Thompson

When I had them fed and quiet, I made them a nice straw nest and put them in the box. They were so happy to crawl down into their dark nest. It felt like home to them.

I climbed on the stepstool and pushed the box as high up under the awning as I could, directly beneath the starling's original nest, where one baby remained. I taped it as best I could to the metal struts under the awning. It wasn't very high--maybe 10' off the ground. But it was protected from the weather and people, and it was facing the same direction as the original nest opening, and I trusted that once those babies got hungry they'd begin churring in there. The parents, who had, after all, witnessed the entire procedure, would eventually figure out what had happened here, orient to the babies' hunger calls, conquer their fear and enter my makeshift starling nest box. At least that was my hope, informed by knowing a little bit about how birds think.

I got back in my car and watched with binoculars as the parent starlings came, bills laden with food, and looked worriedly down into the shrubs where they'd last seen their three babies. I never saw them orient to the box, but then the foundlings were probably sound asleep in there, resting and digesting. Their babies were gone. It would take awhile before they would find them again. It wasn't going to happen while I was there, and I had to drive Liam to Beverly for his play performance anyway.

Cynthia and I hugged, said our goodbyes and left the area, sure that we'd done the best possible thing short of getting the birds back to their original nest (which clearly wasn't a good option anyway, if three of them had fallen out already).

I went inside and thanked the manager and told him we were all set, that I hadn't fallen off the stepstool and cracked my head open, at least not any farther open than it already was, and that the box would be there for only about ten more days.

The starling parents would have to do the rest.

Next: Why do all this for three starlings? Aren't we supposed to hate starlings?

The Grateful Gull

Liam and I, turned loose in Florida, when the Weather Gods decided to smile instead of crap on us. It was in the upper 60's and 70's for the duration of our visit, and only rained one night and the next morning. The reason I'm blogging this now is because it is unconscionably dreary here in them Mid-Ohio Valley right now. 40's and drizzly and gray. Not complaining, mind you, for all of you buried under yards of snowpack. Grateful. Just pinin' for the F'lords.

You never know when a walk on the beach is going to turn into a rescue mission. Liam and I saw this beautiful juvenile bluefish swimming wan figure eights in a tidepool. The tide was receding, and the lovely opalescent bluefish was clearly doomed to become gull food. 

The problem was how to catch a very fast fish with sharp spiny fins and a good set of razor-sharp teeth with only one's bare hands. Which, by the way, one uses to make one's living. I studied on this little dilemma as I walked a short distance past the fish.  I could have kept walking, which was what I wanted to do. But I couldn't leave it there to die. 

Being a landlubber, I don't have much practice catching fast toothy spiny fish bare-handed. Noodling, I believe they call it. I tried the Direct Grab, and the fish wisely nipped me. OK. Direct Grab, bad.

Thought some more with my big brain, like the hunter-gatherer I was designed to be. Aha! Got it. I cornered the fish in the deepest part of its pool and with both hands swept a big wave of water, including the fish, out onto the flat sand.

In moments I had it safely contained and on its way to freedom.

photo by Liam Thompson, who accompanied me to release it just back of the breakers. Yay.

Better luck next tide, Fish.

We hadn't gone another ten minutes of breathing salt air, walking on perfect wet sand and listening to waves when I heard a willet give a sharp, urgent, keening call I'd never heard before. It was clearly sounding an alarm, but for what? I followed the bird's gaze 

far down the beach to a woman with a fishing pole, and a small white gull, grounded, facing a man. 

Oh, that's not good. 

As I ran toward the scene I could see the man was afraid to approach the gull, and that it was tangled in his line and would only get more tangled the more it flapped. Well. We'll see about that.

I swooped in there like a big ol' bird and in one grab had the gull by the back of its neck with its wings tucked under my arm. It bit me a lot, but ordinary bird bites don't bother me in the least, because I was  perforated for 23 years by the best biter that ever lived. She could crack a Brazil nut in one go. Enormous masseter muscles; tremendous crushing power; piercing tip and shearing mandible. By comparison, a nip from a laughing gull is a loving tickle. 

I didn't bite you that much. I just bit you good. 

Yes, you did, Charlie, like a good parrot should. 

Back in my parrot-keeping days, I remember talking with a guy from whom I was buying a used cage. From the look of his hands, he'd handled a lot of parrots. Ever the reporter, I asked him about it. He said the bites didn't hurt him any more. "You get bit enough, the nerves die back." Niiice. Let's all handle parrots until our nerves die back. Then we wouldn't need to scoop bluefish out of tidepools like a wussy. We could just grab those runners with our nerveless hands.

I still have nerves in my hands, and want to keep them, so I secured the little laugher's pointy part, but not before he scored bigtime on my poor titty, whose nerves, despite baby Phoebe and Liam's best efforts, have clearly not died back. How do they know to stab humans where it hurts most? Not slow, these larids. Titty twisters.

I held the gull while the fisherman unwound his line, then Liam shot a commemorative photo of the happy bird-whisperer, and I joyfully hoisted the gull back into the air, to live and laugh again. That was sweet, to give it its freedom, with two still usable wings as a bonus. Monofilament is not kind to bird bones.

We'd been at the beach 20 minutes and already rescued two creatures. I guess we came at the perfect moment. Or we were the right people for the moment. Nobody else on the beach, I noticed, batted an eye or turned around when the willet started shrieking. To my ear, it might as well have been screaming, 

"OH MY GOD THAT GULL'S GONNA BREAK HIS WINGS!!! SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!! ZICK!! ZICK!! ARE YOU SEEING THIS???"

It's all about tuning into what the birds are saying, all the time. Being more huntergathery.

Our hunting and gathering at the lovely Quality Inn seemed to be strictly limited to carbohydrates. Man. I look at these hotel breakfast bars and there is literally nothing the Atkins adherent or Paleogal in me wants to eat. Liam is another story. Malted waffles, cinnamon rolls, English muffins, biscuits with lumpy white gravy...that's just pure breakfast heaven for him. Part of what is unfair about life is that a 15 year old boy can turn that stuff into several feet of python-lean beauty, growing up instead of straight out. His 50 something mother can only watch and marvel and have a half-bowl of Raisin Bran, a guilty pleasure I save strictly for motel stays. It's a sugar bomb, probably the worst of all breakfast cereals. At least motels are consistent in their choices.

We thought the gators looked very well-fed at Merritt Island NWR. They're not eating flapjacks for breakfast.

Little blue heron has that lean and hungry look I dig. An avian javelin, perfection in slate and mauve.

If you can't get a good photo of a little blue heron in Titusville, you're doin' it rong.

We saw more roseate spoonbills this trip than ever. What a treat! And this immature bird has yet to go bald, to show its slightly icky chewing-gum green scalp. I've always wondered why the white Eurasian spoonbill manages to keep its nice white hair, and ours goes bald. 

Miraculous bird, the spoonbill. Another gift.

As was that evening's sunset on Biolab Road.  A good day with my sweet boy in the rare, warm sun.