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For the past few months we have had a couple of birds nesting in our tallest tree. They were a little noisy, but other than that they have pretty much kept to themselves. This is the story of how one member of their family has tried to branch out on their own.
I have been trying to get a good picture of them for ages, but since they never fly very low the best I have been able to do is one overly zoomed picture and one nearly obscured by tree branches as it headed back to its nest.
Ever since we came back from vacation, they have gotten a bit more vocal (meaning ridiculously screechy) with slightly quieter noises coming from the tree even when the birds are out flying around. Apparently they liked our tree well enough to settle in and start a little family of their own. While they do seem to get a little overly excited every time we come home, they don’t swoop down at us or anything so it’s all good still.
Then, while he was doing yard work this past Saturday, Anthony noticed that our brush pile had a new resident. This little fellow (or lady, not like I’m going to get close enough to check even if I knew what to look for)
He/She/It seemed rather curious as to why we kept watching it, but didn’t seem bothered enough to try and get away. We stayed back a ways just in case Mom and Dad Bird noticed a missing kid. With a baby that’s nearly two feet tall I’m thinking the parents must be much much larger than we realized. Then there is the fact that with its sharp little beak and rather sizable claws we didn’t want to piss it off either…So after snapping a bunch of pictures I decided to leave it be and head back into the house so maybe it would return back to the nest.
Sunday the bird was still on the ground, but had decided to venture out and start exploring the rest of our yard. The parents had taken to circling the fields around us and seemed to be calling to it or something, but the kid couldn’t be bothered to answer. I’m now thinking the bird is more teenager than baby with that attitude, downy head feathers be damned.
We wondered if the little guy knew how to fly since he didn’t seem to be going back to the nest at all. He answered that question by hopping from the ground onto a pile of tires, then on top of our old BBQ and up to the top of our shed and then attempted to fly back to his tree. He didn’t make it, and crashed into the tree a little. He clung to the trunk beating his wings at it for a bit before giving up and heading back into the yard for another walk. I imagine he was trying to psych himself up for another try.
After a day of watching flying failure my BF started to get concerned that the bird was going to starve since it was pretty much abandoned and probably wouldn’t know how to hunt. We are not so much ‘nature’ people, so we didn’t really know what exactly to do. Birdseed seemed out since its some sort of bird of prey. Since we couldn’t really catch a rock chuck for it (no matter how much we would like to knock down their hole digging population a little), we were at a loss as to what to feed it. Then he decided to try some raw hamburger. That’s meat, right? Should like it, maybe? He threw a piece on top of the shed, but the bird only walked over and sniffed it. Not so much interest there. No matter, when he saw the bird walking the yard again Anthony put another bit of meat on this irrigation hook and pole type dealy bob thing he had laying around. That way he could wave it near the bird without actually being in its space. The bird did its best to ignore him while he waved it around saying – and I quote – “Open your damn beak and eat the meat damnit!” Oh how I dream of the day when we have a family of our own and I can hear those dulcet tones encouraging our own offspring to eat. Of course I was standing there taking pictures (possibly giggling at his frustration), so I’m not sure either of us would be up for parent of the year awards. Though to be fair – if we were to make our home in the tops of a tree and one of our kids were to fall out we would notice. So take that Mom and Dad bird.
We have grown a bit fond of our feathered friend in the past couple of days and didn’t want anything to happen to him (like starvation or being eating by coyotes) so I did a little googling to try to find out what to do about him. The WA Department of Fish and Wildlife website says
“Every year hundreds of young wild animals such as fawns, baby seals, and baby birds are needlessly "rescued" and referred to wildlife rehabilitators. This is extremely detrimental and harmful to the young animal, as well as disruptive and costly to wildlife rehabilitators when they most need to concentrate limited resources on truly orphaned or injured wildlife. Unless the animal is showing obvious signs of illness or injury such as bleeding, vomiting, panting, shivering, lethargy, ruffled feathers or fur, attack by cat/dog, leave them there.”
So….attempted force feedings have been cancelled for the near future. Other than that the bird doesn’t really seem to be hurt at all. And while it is a bit lazy I wouldn’t go so far as to say lethargic. Since not doing anything appears to be the right thing to do, I can continue to click away with my handy dandy telephoto lens without guilt. But I did click on the link to email questions about wildlife rehabilitations and gave them a quick overview and a couple of pictures. I wanted to make sure I at least asked if there was anything anyone needed to do, and plus I wanted to find out what kind of bird it is exactly. I’m hoping to get some sort of reply from them soon.
In case anyone else has some bird wisdom they would like to share in the mean time, here are a couple clearer pictures of the bird in question:
Our feathery friend does seem to be an agreeable sort, at least for now. The bird seems perfectly willing to sit there while I take endless pictures and will even occasionally move from spot to spot in order to give me a variety of backgrounds. Right now it seems especially happy with the roof of the shed though.
Although when I just popped my head out the door a minute ago I saw this:
Maybe it’s decided to give up flying in favor of other forms of transportation? I don’t suppose there any volunteers to put my scooter back in the shed for me?
Mon 8:15pm edited to add -
The bird finally got hungry enough that it attacked both a mole and a robin (which it is now eating). While I know it isn't very good news for the robin, I am quite excited it actually knows how to hunt.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selasphorus and svrsek from the group ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
birdlovers for identifying the bird as a red tailed hawk. And thanks to eleri from the same group for pointing me to kaseyhawks.com and Lura (no LJ account) for telling me about raptorhouse.org. I still plan to call the rescue numbers tomorrow just to see if they think the bird needs to be moved or if we just need to wait for it to learn to fly on its own. Now that I've seen it hunt, I feel much better about its chances :)
I have been trying to get a good picture of them for ages, but since they never fly very low the best I have been able to do is one overly zoomed picture and one nearly obscured by tree branches as it headed back to its nest.
Ever since we came back from vacation, they have gotten a bit more vocal (meaning ridiculously screechy) with slightly quieter noises coming from the tree even when the birds are out flying around. Apparently they liked our tree well enough to settle in and start a little family of their own. While they do seem to get a little overly excited every time we come home, they don’t swoop down at us or anything so it’s all good still.
Then, while he was doing yard work this past Saturday, Anthony noticed that our brush pile had a new resident. This little fellow (or lady, not like I’m going to get close enough to check even if I knew what to look for)
He/She/It seemed rather curious as to why we kept watching it, but didn’t seem bothered enough to try and get away. We stayed back a ways just in case Mom and Dad Bird noticed a missing kid. With a baby that’s nearly two feet tall I’m thinking the parents must be much much larger than we realized. Then there is the fact that with its sharp little beak and rather sizable claws we didn’t want to piss it off either…So after snapping a bunch of pictures I decided to leave it be and head back into the house so maybe it would return back to the nest.
Sunday the bird was still on the ground, but had decided to venture out and start exploring the rest of our yard. The parents had taken to circling the fields around us and seemed to be calling to it or something, but the kid couldn’t be bothered to answer. I’m now thinking the bird is more teenager than baby with that attitude, downy head feathers be damned.
We wondered if the little guy knew how to fly since he didn’t seem to be going back to the nest at all. He answered that question by hopping from the ground onto a pile of tires, then on top of our old BBQ and up to the top of our shed and then attempted to fly back to his tree. He didn’t make it, and crashed into the tree a little. He clung to the trunk beating his wings at it for a bit before giving up and heading back into the yard for another walk. I imagine he was trying to psych himself up for another try.
After a day of watching flying failure my BF started to get concerned that the bird was going to starve since it was pretty much abandoned and probably wouldn’t know how to hunt. We are not so much ‘nature’ people, so we didn’t really know what exactly to do. Birdseed seemed out since its some sort of bird of prey. Since we couldn’t really catch a rock chuck for it (no matter how much we would like to knock down their hole digging population a little), we were at a loss as to what to feed it. Then he decided to try some raw hamburger. That’s meat, right? Should like it, maybe? He threw a piece on top of the shed, but the bird only walked over and sniffed it. Not so much interest there. No matter, when he saw the bird walking the yard again Anthony put another bit of meat on this irrigation hook and pole type dealy bob thing he had laying around. That way he could wave it near the bird without actually being in its space. The bird did its best to ignore him while he waved it around saying – and I quote – “Open your damn beak and eat the meat damnit!” Oh how I dream of the day when we have a family of our own and I can hear those dulcet tones encouraging our own offspring to eat. Of course I was standing there taking pictures (possibly giggling at his frustration), so I’m not sure either of us would be up for parent of the year awards. Though to be fair – if we were to make our home in the tops of a tree and one of our kids were to fall out we would notice. So take that Mom and Dad bird.
We have grown a bit fond of our feathered friend in the past couple of days and didn’t want anything to happen to him (like starvation or being eating by coyotes) so I did a little googling to try to find out what to do about him. The WA Department of Fish and Wildlife website says
“Every year hundreds of young wild animals such as fawns, baby seals, and baby birds are needlessly "rescued" and referred to wildlife rehabilitators. This is extremely detrimental and harmful to the young animal, as well as disruptive and costly to wildlife rehabilitators when they most need to concentrate limited resources on truly orphaned or injured wildlife. Unless the animal is showing obvious signs of illness or injury such as bleeding, vomiting, panting, shivering, lethargy, ruffled feathers or fur, attack by cat/dog, leave them there.”
So….attempted force feedings have been cancelled for the near future. Other than that the bird doesn’t really seem to be hurt at all. And while it is a bit lazy I wouldn’t go so far as to say lethargic. Since not doing anything appears to be the right thing to do, I can continue to click away with my handy dandy telephoto lens without guilt. But I did click on the link to email questions about wildlife rehabilitations and gave them a quick overview and a couple of pictures. I wanted to make sure I at least asked if there was anything anyone needed to do, and plus I wanted to find out what kind of bird it is exactly. I’m hoping to get some sort of reply from them soon.
In case anyone else has some bird wisdom they would like to share in the mean time, here are a couple clearer pictures of the bird in question:
Our feathery friend does seem to be an agreeable sort, at least for now. The bird seems perfectly willing to sit there while I take endless pictures and will even occasionally move from spot to spot in order to give me a variety of backgrounds. Right now it seems especially happy with the roof of the shed though.
Although when I just popped my head out the door a minute ago I saw this:
Maybe it’s decided to give up flying in favor of other forms of transportation? I don’t suppose there any volunteers to put my scooter back in the shed for me?
Mon 8:15pm edited to add -
The bird finally got hungry enough that it attacked both a mole and a robin (which it is now eating). While I know it isn't very good news for the robin, I am quite excited it actually knows how to hunt.
Thanks to
selasphorus and svrsek from the group birdlovers for identifying the bird as a red tailed hawk. And thanks to eleri from the same group for pointing me to kaseyhawks.com and Lura (no LJ account) for telling me about raptorhouse.org. I still plan to call the rescue numbers tomorrow just to see if they think the bird needs to be moved or if we just need to wait for it to learn to fly on its own. Now that I've seen it hunt, I feel much better about its chances :)
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 04:26 am (UTC)From:Like teenagers most animals will find something to eat when they get hungry but before that will ignore everything.
When you have kids I really really hope that if rlbf says (with mouth instead of beak)you get a recording of it and share.
I hope that your birdie will be okay!
Love you honey!!!!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-16 04:31 am (UTC)From:Now that our birdie has decided to eat I think it will be okay, but I'll keep you posted whether you want me to or not :)
Miss you!!!