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Wildlife Wednesday – Bird Education (continued from yesterday)

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post you’ll want to go back and start there.  Otherwise, this won’t make much sense.  

This next chapter is when things got really weird.  That evening when we checked, the nest with the two big baby birds had only one big baby bird.  We looked everywhere trying to see if it had fallen out and needed help.  We never found it.  BUT . . . .  when we looked up to the nest it had been in, the other big baby bird was almost completely out of the nest, sort of perching half in and half out.   AND . . . .  as one of the “warbler” birds flew in, three tiny heads popped up beside big baby bird, mouths wide open for a meal.

Let me summarize at this point because this only gets weirder from here. We have a nest of king birds on a branch hanging over the pond.  Mom and dad king bird are feeding.  The nest looks a bit damaged but all seems well despite that.  We have a second nest up higher.  A black and maroon bird and a couple of “warbler” birds are feeding the babies in this nest.  (That should NOT be happening.)  In this nest were two large baby birds (one is now gone) and three tiny baby birds.

 

King bird nest

 

 

Nest #2

 

My daughters and I discussed the parasite bird syndrome.  There are birds who lay their eggs in another bird’s nest leaving the other bird to raise their own young AND the “parasite” babies.  We thought the bigger baby birds could be parasite babies but that wouldn’t explain why two different kinds of birds were feeding this nest of young.

The next day Younger Daughter and I were checking the nests.  And that second big baby was out of the nest.  It was sitting in a clump of pond grass so close to the water that it was bound to fall in at any moment.   Younger had to wade out into the pond but she was able to shoo it towards the bank.  I eventually was able to pick it up and set it on a brand in the tree.  We hoped that its parent would continue to feed it until it was ready to fly away.

 

Big baby bird

 

 

That evening we checked and the baby big bird was higher in the tree, perched on a branch.  Wonderful!  Also that evening we discovered that there was yet a third nest even higher in the tree.  We watched and it seemed maybe one of the yellow-ish warbler birds might be feeding at that nest.  Wow, were we ever confused!

 

Nest #3

 

Nearly every one of us had tried looking up what kind of bird was the black and maroon one.  No luck.  We knew it wasn’t a parasite parent because it had hung around to keep feeding the babies.  But it SEEMED like the black and maroon bird had laid its eggs in the warbler nest and now the black and maroon bird and the warbler birds were feeding their babies IN THE SAME NEST.  And that just doesn’t happen!

So that night in bed, I got on my phone and decided I would try again to identify the black and maroon bird.  Lo and behold I found it!  It was an Orchard Oriole.  The male matched perfectly and the female made my mouth drop open.  Guess what the female looks like.  A yellow-ish warbler.  So now it started making sense.  The male and female Orchard Oriole were feeding their babies in nest #2.  The other yellow-ish “warbler” was feeding at the very high nest #3 (along with her partner – more in a minute).  The two BIG baby birds in the Orchard Oriole nest actually WERE parasite birds.  A brown headed cowbird had laid her eggs in the Orchard Oriole nest.   As I read more about Orchard Orioles, my mouth stayed open.  Orchard Orioles only come to southern Illinois to breed.  So it was rare that we’d been lucky enough to witness this.  But get this!  They build their nests near king bird nests because king birds are more aggressive and they keep the cowbirds away!  So the Orchard Orioles had done everything right.  They made their way from Mexico or Central America to breed here in the Midwest.  They built their nest in the same tree with a pair of king birds who were supposed to keep the parasite cowbirds away.  It didn’t work out exactly as planned and a cowbird DID lay her eggs in the Orchard Oriole nest and those two poor parents managed to feed the cowbirds and their own three.  And we watched every bit of this play out right here at our pond.  WHAT a mystery turned education!

 

Oh, and I said we discovered that third nest way up in the tree.  When I kept seeing TWO yellow-ish birds flying in and out of the tree – well, one was the female orchard oriole; the other was a female Baltimore oriole.  We got to see the male show up on one of the last evenings at the pond.  A pair of king birds, a pair of Orchard Orioles, and a pair of Baltimore Orioles all in the same tree.  How lovely!

 

Wildlife Wednesday (on Tuesday) – Bird Education

A Wildlife Wednesday has always meant that I am writing about Older Daughter’s wildlife rehab.  But today I’m telling a story about some wildlife, specifically birds, living in the wild but with a little help from me and my family.  The story starts simply enough, but every single day we seemed to add a new chapter.  And what an education it was!

There are a couple of ponds on the property here.  One is right beside the road that both Older and Younger Daughters take to leave the property and get on the blacktop county road.  This pond is directly across from Younger Daughter’s house.   One morning as Older Daughter was driving by this pond, she noticed what she thought was a bird nest on a low branch hanging out over the water.  That evening we went to check it out.  Sure enough, a couple of king birds had built their nest in what looked like a treacherous location.  We watched for a while as the mother and father king birds came and went, feeding their babies.  Older mentioned that once those babies were ready to leave the nest, if they did much bouncing around at all they would end up in the pond.  But the real fear was high wind.  For sure that little nest, or at least the babies, were going to topple into the water under the right (wrong) conditions.  There wasn't even another branch below the nest for them to grab if they went sailing out of the nest. 

We debated what to do, discussed trying to build something that could float under that branch.  It was Husband who said we could get the old jon boat from the other pond, float it out to the right spot, and stabilize it under the branch.   Husband and Son-In-Law went for the boat.  Husband grabbed some metal posts.  We floated the boat out and under that branch.  The king bird parents actually didn’t seem to mind the disruption in their evening.  SIL waded out into the pond and pushed the metal posts on each side of the boat and Husband drove a post in on the bank.  Then he tied the boat to that post and ta-da we had a safe place for baby birds to land if they did topple out.  The only additional thing we did was to fill the boat with straw.   Falling into straw meant NOT falling onto the hot metal boat floor and it would be easy to grab onto the straw and even to hop around.

 

 

So that was that.   We decided that we would all check the nest and boat any time one of us went by.   Things seemed fine until we noticed another nest.  This one was higher up but luckily still almost directly over the boat.  Well that was handy.  Now this second nest of babies would also have a safe place to land if they were tossed out during any high winds.  

It became sort of a family affair to all meet up at the “bird tree” in the evenings.  Husband and I and sometimes Older and her husband, sometimes Younger and her husband, would stand a good distance away and watch the mom and dad king birds fly back and forth to feed their young.  We started noticing a bird flying in and out of the tree to the area where the second nest was located.  I commented that I hadn’t ever seen a bird like this one.  Years ago, when my girls were little, I took a real interest in learning birds.  It wasn’t long before I could identify any bird that came to my feeders or that I saw on walks through the fields and woods here.  But this was a bird I couldn’t identify.  It was black, but with a maroon/russet underside.  I googled it but Google kept trying to tell me it was a red-winged black bird no matter how I described it.

Then an evening or two later, I noticed a couple of dull yellow birds flying in and out of the tree.  It definitely looked like they were flying to the same nest as the black and maroon bird.  THAT didn’t make sense.  Two different kinds of birds would not be feeding at the same nest.  That night I started looking up yellow-ish Southern Illinois birds.  I found a picture that sort of looked like these birds.  Apparently they were a type of warbler.  But I still couldn’t figure out why it appeared that this warbler bird and the black/maroon bird were feeding the same babies. 

The following day, Older had me come down to her house to help her with something and I told her I’d check the boat as I drove by the pond to make sure there were no tossed-out babies.  We’d had a quite windy night.  I parked and walked over and Oh dear! the king bird nest didn’t look good.  The far side had quite a bit of material hanging down.  I scanned the best I could inside the boat to see if any baby birds had fallen out.  No babies in the boat.  And I couldn’t really see what kind of damage the nest had sustained because the hanging-down nesting materials were on the far side of the nest.  About that time, in flew one of the king bird parents and three little bird heads popped straight up with mouths wide open.  OK, all was well with that nest.   I looked up high to the other nest and saw something odd.  I could see two baby birds - not their heads sticking up, but the whole baby birds.  It was very strange.  It was like these two babies had suddenly gotten too big for their nest.  I got to Older Daughter’s house and told her what I’d seen.  She, too, thought it odd for the babies to seem too big for their nest. 

This is a long story.  And it only gets weirder.  I’ll finish up tomorrow.  See you then.

 

Wildlife Wednesday

Hi Friends.  I’ve explained here at daily dose why I haven’t been blogging this winter/spring.  There were lots of family health issues that just kept coming.  One of those issues was a long roller coaster ride with my older daughter.  She is the one who has Wild Angels Wildlife Rehab.  She is taking this spring off.  She is nearing the end of a high-risk pregnancy and simply could not do her wildlife work this year.  Things are looking up at this point so we are now hopeful that this pregnancy will result in a healthy baby and a healthy Older Daughter.

She has been quite disturbed having to turn people away who have called with wildlife issues.  She has a long list of rehabbers she is referring people to.  There have been two baby animals that she ended up taking anyway because they simply had nowhere else to go. 

She took in a baby squirrel who was dehydrated and starving.  That baby was successfully brought to health and has been released.

 

 

 

And currently she has a baby starling which was SO young she did not expect it to live.  But so far it seems to be gaining some strength (and some tiny feathers).  So fingers crossed for this little baby.

 

 

 

Hopefully Older Daughter can direct any future calls to other rehabbers. 

 

I will mention one precious thing.  I have written about Ms Wobbly Raccoon.  The story is here if you are unfamiliar.  This little gal comes back year after year to Older Daughter’s yard.  In years past, she’s brought her offspring with her.  She presented herself just the other day – no sign of a little family yet, but the babies might still be in the den.  It’s just so nice that she returns and Older Daughter gets to see that she is doing just fine.

 

 

I'm sure by next spring Older Daughter will be back to her wildlife (although I hope at a reduced scale).   :)

 

June

As I said in my last blog post, I’m not going to miss a chance to thank a Winnie’s Wish supporter even though I’m not blogging much right now.   The number one supporter of Winnie’s Wish is someone you all know and love – Andrea of Celestial Kitties.  Andrea knows that we’ve had a rough winter/spring here.  Andrea hasn’t had the best winter and spring either.   Still – I received a super duper gift for the Wishers from Andrea (and husband Greg).

 

Andrea – THANK YOU.

 

Note – I’m going to do a short Wildlife Wednesday tomorrow to let folks know what’s going on at Wild Angels – my daughter’s wildlife rehab.