Baby Birds

Today Taylor found a baby thrush. It was brown, and its little mouth was light pink when it open it wide for food. I grabbed the bird and placed it into Taylor's pink metal bucket and showed it to Scotty, who said we should wash our hands immediately. I asked him what birds eat, and he said we should throw the bird away. As we stood at the edge of the gravel driveway arguing over the demise of the baby bird, I looked over and saw the dead mama bird on the ground under a tree. She was stiff and covered in ants. So, where was the chirping coming from?

Taylor looked around and squealed when she saw another baby bird peeking at us from behind the tree. Now we had two baby birds to rescue. I called my friend Kim Crews, who works for the Reelfoot Lake Research and Teaching Center. I used to teach at Kim at OCCHS, and I know she knows her stuff. I told her we had a dead thrush and two baby birds. She told me where to buy wax worms, and she asked me to bag up the mama bird and put it in the freezer for her.

I grabbed a large shoe box and ripped the lid off. Taylor and I put on our gardening gloves before heading to the back yard, where we stuffed the box full of dry grass. We then went to the front yard to retrieve the birds. I tackled the mama bird with a freezer bag, and Taylor ran after the baby bird that wasn't in the pink bucket.
Stuffing the mama bird into a freezer bag was impossible. She was too big for the Glad freezer bag, and the ants had started to eat away at her natural beauty. Taylor screamed as the baby bird ran toward her, so I gave up on the mama bird and helped Taylor grab the baby bird and plop it into the shoe box. I added the bird from the pink bucket, and the two immediately lifted their mouths into the air for food. I left them on the porch and took Taylor with me to the local gas station that sells fish bait/baby bird food.

We drove to Preuett's gas station and a clerk helped me pick out a small plastic cup of wax worms and a Styrofoam box of night crawlers. She told me to keep them in the fridge, and she even opened the box of night crawlers to ensure they were alive. One raised its head from the black soil in the box and nearly crawled out onto the counter. Kim told me mama birds chew worms for their babies, so I would have to chop these worms up and feed the birds using tweezers. And I thought today would be boring!

When we arrived home, I grabbed the tweezers, poured water into one of Taylor's sippy cups, and walked to the front porch to go to work saving baby birds. I tried the wax worms first. They're small and easy to grab with tweezers. I pressed a worm to one bird's beak, but the bird's eyes were closed, and it didn't respond. Taylor tried, too. I picked up the sippy cup and poured a small amount of water on a bird's beak. This worked well; the bird nodded its head in appreciation and opened its mouth for more. I popped a worm into the bird's open mouth, and it gobbled it up and waited for more.

The other bird was smaller and not as hungry. I tried the water trick, but the little bird shook its head in annoyance. It took a lot of contrivance, but I finally made the second bird eat two wax worms and drink a small amount of water.

We took the shoe box to the back yard and let the bird walk around in a shallow bowl of cool water. I emptied the box of the old grass and replaced it with fresh grass. After we put the bird back into the shoe box, we left them on the deck for a few minutes.

We decided to see if Opie could respect our avian guests, so we let him out to have a look. He stopped in front of the shoe box and tilted his head to one side. Then he moved his head closer to the birds. I thought, "Oh, he's saying hello." He was actually saying, "You look delicious." Before I could stop him, he had snatched one of the birds in his mouth. I screamed, and he let it go.

I moved the shoe box to the front porch and attempted to feed the critters more worms. I was letting them each have a drink from the sippy cup when I heard a familiar sound in the yard. I stood up to get a closer look. It was a third baby bird. I ran out to it, and snatched it up in one hand. This one was much stronger than the other two. It was obvious he had developed more fully and was almost ready to fly. He fought me as I ambled to the shoe box, and I actually dropped him onto the dry grass of the shoe box. He froze with his face pressed into the bottom of the box, but after a moment he hopped up and bobbed out of the box to the edge of the porch. I picked the little rascal up and force-fed him water and a wax worm before returning him to the box.

So, that is how three baby birds came to live on our front porch. I have no idea what they're going to do when we leave for Disney this weekend. I don't think we can get anyone to feed them worms while we're gone. We'll have to wait and see.