have several consecutive rain-free days forecast; the Carolina wren, now in the flight pen, can be released with the finches.
he’s flying, so he has a chance at release and the freedom he so desperately wants!
The possum trio has been released, also, and they were quite happy to be on their clueless, dim-witted little ways.
Despite my best efforts, I was unable to reunite the failed fledgling bluebird with his family, but as luck would have it, he had a “cousin” come in the very next day—a pre-fledgling American robin with a broken
wrist. (Robins and bluebirds are both members of the thrush family.) Idiots set on wiping out every tree in the area they were planning to “develop” chopped down the tree this baby’s nest was in, and he ended up in the
neighbor’s yard. His siblings were probably crushed by the falling tree; his finders did look for other survivors and didn’t find any.
Meanwhile he has the bluebird for companionship. The bluebird should be in the flight pen, but he seems to help lower the robin’s stress levels, so he’ll stay inside for a while longer.
“Cuz,” as I’m calling the robin, is doing amazingly well. He’s attempting to use that splinted wing, eating well, and very much likes having the bluebird as a buddy. So we have Cuz and Buddy, unlikely companions anywhere
outside a rehab setting, doing well and growing apace. Only time will tell if Cuz’s wing will heal to allow flight, but we’re gonna give him that time.
her demanding food while it thaws the day she came in and then witness her appetite for yourselves.
showed off by vigorously swimming upstream against a strong current.
Every so often, someone comes along who halfway restores my hope for humanity's future. The folks who brought me four nestling red-bellied woodpeckers this morning are in that very small group. When their new neighbors chopped down the tree the nest was in on Thursday without even checking for active nests first, the
rescuers 1) cussed out the neighbors (now these are MY kind of people!); 2) attempted to rig a makeshift nest; 3) when the parents hadn't returned by dark, retrieved the babies; 4) called me for advice on feeding BEFORE attempting to offer any food; 5) made arrangements to meet me in the AM with the woodpeckers. And they drove ALL THE WAY FROM BRUNSWICK to save these babies' lives. For my friends outside Georgia, that's a two-hour ONE WAY drive from the coast using the back roads; three hours one-way on the interstate. These are people who give a damn about our native wildlife, and they put action behind their words. We need more people like them, not just in Georgia but around the globe.
The red bellies are doing quite well, and the little runt that the rescuers and I were worried about has now become the most vocal of the group in demanding his fair share of the food! I suspect that as the runt, probably a late hatch, he was getting less food in the nest, which further slowed his development. It may not be obvious in the photos and video, but I can see marked development in just the three days he and his sibs have been at LWR.
active nests. Yeah, all you developers and chainsaw happy fools out there, this means you, too. You are supposed to check for active nests BEFORE pruning limbs or felling trees, and when I know the names of individuals or companies who don’t follow the regulations, you damn well better believe I report them to both
the state and federal authorities. I have five babies right now—the robin and the red bellies—who should be in the wild being raised by their parents but were robbed of that right by idiots who don’t give a damn about nature, the environment, or the laws they broke by destroying active nests. I say it’s time for state and federal authorities to come down on some of these violators very hard and very publicly and let people know this nonsense must stop and that violators will be punished to the fullest extent of the law…not nearly as
severely as I’d like, but not everyone believes in the Hammurabian code of justice…