Guest " " Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Three days ago I saw a little nestling sitting next to my trash can. As I approached my trash can to put garbage in it....the mom did her injured bird gig to attempt to get my attention. I walked off and let them be for a while. The nestling crawled under my trash can. not a good thing. Anyway, I slowly lifted the trash can and moved it. Put my trash away, and went inside. Later that night I saw the nestling sitting in a bush.... pretty high up...so at least it would be safe for the nigh. The next day I saw the mom on numerous occasion circling around the area finding the nestling to feed it. The nestling was pretty active in it's foot patrol of that section of the yard and was never in the same place twice. The nestling look capable of flying....but seemed to have missed a lesson or two...walked everywhere it went. I wondered if the nestling would make it....we have a few stray cats in the area...and this nestling looked like an easy target. Having recalled my days as a little boy trying to rescue these nestlings and never been successful, I decided to let things be...any chance of the birds survival would be with the mom.....so I thought. This morning all was quiet in the yard. No signs of the mom or the nestling. No calls back and forth from either...perhaps they moved off into another yard I thought. Well as I walked to my car which had been pared there for a few days , a few hundred feet from my house I saw the mother bird up on a phone line chirping away as if to call her nestling. As I approach , in the middle of the road, there was the nestling...it had been run over by a car....barely recognizable as a bird. Sad indeed. Good luck to the rest of the nestlings out there......as always.....many do make it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MechMan Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Damm, circle of life aint supposed to include cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 It is a sad story. I thought this might be the joke about two guys who go to heaven and are assigned new wives, respectively. Let me use this as a opportunity to describe a bird rescue. In the '70s. I was in the family house garage on LI, working on the old Volvo, my college car. Probably the cranky carbs. There was suddenly a tremendous commotion next to me. It was a pigeon flopping around and making the whirring sound they do in flight. I was startled and had no idea what to do with the swirling mass of feathers and noise. My father walked in, quite by accident, and very calmly picked up the poor thing, cupping its wings between two hands as if there was nothing to it, and the bird settled down immediately. He gave it a good look over and pronounced it was a bald (something) probably bald roller, and maybe a little sick. He also explained that while eagles with a white head are said to bald, so are other birds. He was otherwise a quiet man with his knowledge -- which was extensive. (So Night on Bald Mountain is about a white capped mountain, rather than a bare topped mountain?) He said, we'll just put it in this cardboard box so a cat can't get to it. Then it will fly off tomorrow. The bird was calm in the cardboard box and the next day it was gone. Probably having a good rest and flying away. The explanation was that dad had raised pigeons as a kid on his rooftop in Brooklyn, NY. He had never mentioned this aspect of his youth, before. Dads know a lot about thing you never knew about, I learned that day.. Smile, WMcD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
germerikan Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Sad to hear about the one that did not make it. We have a garden and every year bluetits nest in one of our larger trees. The first year that we installed a nest the pair had 4 young ones. Well molting was done and the first trys of flight were attempted. Being the natur friends that we are we thought let nature take its course and the strongest survive. Yeah right... Being the softie I am (at least with animals) every time one would make a failed attempt and crash to the ground I would pick it up (using gloves) and place it back close to the nest. Did not want the cats or birds of prey getting to them. This went on 2 days including a couple of saves during the night and all 4 came through. Those birds came back quite often that summer and fed out of the hand. Every time we see them move in in spring we wonder if it is the next generation of the ones we saved. Unfortunately the tree died this year so I am thinking of attaching the nest to a pole in the same place just for those little guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juniper8 Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Thats very sad..... It was very hot here the other day so i decided to give a nestling a drink of water and a light spray to perhaps cool it off. It seemed to enjoy it at first, even taking sips of the spray, next thing I see it flop out of the nest on to the gound. So I get ladder put it back in the nest, and it pops out again... I place back again and it is still there..... I thought for sure it was back to the rescue shelter... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elitedemo Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 We had some baby robins last year nesting in one of the trees outside the house. We have 2 dogs both english springers and very fast, they love birds, I never took them hunting but they will chase low flying birds as fast as they can through the yard. Long story short I go to let the dogs out in the very early morning to do their business and they both take off in a dead sprint 20 ft away. 2 baby birds must have been learning how to fly and the adult bird was circling and dive bombing the dogs and myself. The younger dog ended up catching one bird before I could say anything and finished it off, at least I was able to call them off of getting the 2nd one. The mother bird ending up circling for around and calling for a good day or two and would dive bomb anyone in the backyard until it figured it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscarsear Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Nasty business, nature can be. In my back yard I have a bird feeder, several bird houses and a bird bath. In the one feeder I run through about 50 pounds of seed weekly. Mallards, doves, robins, nuthatches, sparrows, etc, etc............. And then there is the National Geographic predatory side to this menagerie. Hawks, ospreys and swifts. The raptors idle about for easy food. The swifts are in the same family as swallows and they do nest raids. They do not eat their quarry. They just kill off the newborns to keep the competition population down. But the unexpected lethal side is me and my glass paneled patio fence. They bang into the glass frequently. If they do this too hard or at the wrong angle they get 86'd. I do have my dogs. The Corgi is too heavy to give chase. But I have a Basset-hound/Dachshund mix that'll react in a flash. But he does not kill. He retrieves, I presume as a matter of his natural tendency. He brings me the dead and the dazed and any who survive get to fly again. It is a zoo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JL Sargent Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Bummer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 I bet it was Opie and his new sling shot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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