Possibly so! If you’ll recall, last Sunday I had three nestling finches. This past week, three more came in, only slightly younger than the original three, so they’re now all in a reptarium inside, pre-outside flight pen, until their flight skills improve and they start eating some on their own. They’re active and vocal little rascals as they half-fly, half-walk from perch to perch. I love this awkward, silly stage. They’ve also discovered the joys of bathing!
And today, four more house finches, hatchlings this time, came in. The nest, built in a wreath, fell yesterday, and the couple whose house hosted the wreath did everything right. They first attempted to put the nest back in place, but it fell again, this time breaking apart. The couple then took the remnants of the nest and placed them in a more secure spot, about two feet away from the wreath, according to the wife. The parents should have found the babies by their peeping for food, but they didn’t. The mother never returned to her babies, so these featherless, eyes-closed wee ones remained without brooding all night.
The couple worried about them all night, even going so far as to find a recording of finches and play it near the nest before dark, hoping to attract the mother to her babies. This morning they were cold and listless, so the wife called me in tears and described what they’d done. It should have worked. It’s worked in the past. I told her they’d done exactly what I would’ve recommended but now, since Mama Finch hadn’t returned, those babies needed to be on low heat immediately and then gotten to me ASAP.
Within about 90 minutes I had three warm but lethargic babies. The fourth had died en route. Once they were rehydrated, they perked up and we started small feedings—they’re tiny, so the feedings are small, anyway! They’re gaping for me now, and I think they’ve at least got a fighting chance.
The couple worried about them all night, even going so far as to find a recording of finches and play it near the nest before dark, hoping to attract the mother to her babies. This morning they were cold and listless, so the wife called me in tears and described what they’d done. It should have worked. It’s worked in the past. I told her they’d done exactly what I would’ve recommended but now, since Mama Finch hadn’t returned, those babies needed to be on low heat immediately and then gotten to me ASAP.
Within about 90 minutes I had three warm but lethargic babies. The fourth had died en route. Once they were rehydrated, they perked up and we started small feedings—they’re tiny, so the feedings are small, anyway! They’re gaping for me now, and I think they’ve at least got a fighting chance.
So…yeah. Nine house finches (HOFI) now…Not my all-time HOFI record this early in the season, but pretty darn close!
Sadly, the Eastern bluebird eggs are gonna be a bust, it appears. One started pipping yesterday, and I got really excited, thinking that I’d have a hatchling within hours. Bluebird eggs normally take 1-6 hours to hatch. By hour 12, I knew we had a problem. Sadly, the poor baby pipped but never finished absorbing the yolk sac prior to hatching. It basically “died a-bornin’.” Putting it in human terms, it would be like a woman carrying a child to term, healthy right up to birth, and then it being stillborn for no apparent reason.
Sadly, the Eastern bluebird eggs are gonna be a bust, it appears. One started pipping yesterday, and I got really excited, thinking that I’d have a hatchling within hours. Bluebird eggs normally take 1-6 hours to hatch. By hour 12, I knew we had a problem. Sadly, the poor baby pipped but never finished absorbing the yolk sac prior to hatching. It basically “died a-bornin’.” Putting it in human terms, it would be like a woman carrying a child to term, healthy right up to birth, and then it being stillborn for no apparent reason.
The other bluebird egg seems to’ve stopped developing. I’ll give it several more days to see what happens, but my guess is that it won’t hatch and when I declare it a lost cause and open it to see what happened, I’ll find a gray sludge of half-developed embryo. I’ve seen it before when I removed unhatched eggs from my bluebird box the fourth day after the others have hatched, and again, the best human analogy here would be a miscarriage late in the pregnancy.
Whenever LWR gets a call about baby birds in really odd places—boat motors, grilles of seldom-used vehicles, tractor tires, pants pockets (no joke!), inside apparently sealed boxes—I’m 99% sure we’ve got Carolina wrens coming in. Sure enough, last week a recycling business called and said someone had brought in an old air conditioning unit for scrap metal, and the business owner heard a racket inside…yep, five nestling Carolina wrens, eyes just beginning to open!
They weren’t too long without food, so they were in good shape when they came in and remain hungry little rascals. I adore these loud-mouthed, perky little birds with their amazingly long, slender beaks—even as babies, their beaks are so distinctive!
Whenever LWR gets a call about baby birds in really odd places—boat motors, grilles of seldom-used vehicles, tractor tires, pants pockets (no joke!), inside apparently sealed boxes—I’m 99% sure we’ve got Carolina wrens coming in. Sure enough, last week a recycling business called and said someone had brought in an old air conditioning unit for scrap metal, and the business owner heard a racket inside…yep, five nestling Carolina wrens, eyes just beginning to open!
They weren’t too long without food, so they were in good shape when they came in and remain hungry little rascals. I adore these loud-mouthed, perky little birds with their amazingly long, slender beaks—even as babies, their beaks are so distinctive!
And I don’t see pied-billed grebes too often at all. The last one was several falls ago, and because he was out of breeding mode, he was actually a sweet little fellow. The grebe who came in last week, however, is in full breeding mode and thinks he’s loon-size—with all the attendant aggression. To give you an idea of how tiny he is, when I needed my personal tub back last night for a shower (the domestic mallard duckling is currently in the “rehab” tub), I took a plastic storage tub (app. 30 inches long, 20 inches wide and 24 inches deep) and filled it with water, and the aggressive little fellow not only has room to swim; he has depth enough to dive! The video below of him glaring at the camcorder was while he was still in my tub; he freaks out when I walk near him in his storage tub “pond.”
Pied-billed grebes are not known for their flight skills; in fact, they seldom fly. Their legs, ending with funky lobed feet, are set so far back on their bodies that they’re very awkward on land, so they spend the vast majority of their lives in the water and are amazingly skilled divers. That makes it all the more surprising that this little guy was found grounded in an industrial complex. His left wing was at some point broken in the wild and healed at the odd angle you can see above and in the photo below. For a bird that relied on flight for survival, this would be a death sentence; for a bird like a grebe that seldom flies, it simply means he needs a safe, predator-proof pond. I’ve already got a place in mind for this guy and just received permission from the landowners to release him there, so thank you to Chris and Shelley Baumann!
And finally, Amazon.com has a great new program, Amazon Smile, that allows you to have 0.5% of the cost of your eligible purchases donated to the charity of your choice, as long as it’s registered with their program—and LWR is, of course, registered. As an avid Amazon user myself (in their early days I used to joke that I was the reason they turned a profit), I know that 0.5% can add up over time, so click on the link below and the landing page should show LWR as your charity of choice—then remember to shop Smile.amazon.com in the future, and you benefit LWR with almost no effort. I mean, you don’t even have to get dressed and leave the house. Seriously, folks—it can’t get much easier than that!
RSS Feed
