Making the Baby Bird Rounds

I had 21 bluebirds and 15 Carolina chickadees to keep alive, in weather like this: 48 degrees and raining nonstop. 

I hand-fed 18 of the bluebirds four times that day (four were too old to feed; I risked causing premature fledging), and after feeding them I left bug omelet on the roofs of their boxes and those of the chickadees, and to a bird each parent fed that stuff to its babies as soon as I was gone. The older babies got fed--I just crept up and put some live mealworms mixed with bug omelet on top of their box and the parents did the rest.

I'd just get back from rounds (some of the boxes are about five miles away from my house) and it would be time to cook up another couple of omelets and head out again. I was thankful for the bluebirds who'd gape for me right off the bat, like this little shaver. Oh, they were hungry!

                                                         photo by Liam Thompson

The Carolina chickadees were tricky. They're smarter than bluebirds, and they won't gape for just anybody who whistles at them the way young bluebirds will, so I had to leave food for the parents on their box roofs. It worked. The parents fed it to them.

I found one chickadee baby choking down an enormous green caterpillar. It was swallowing it just like a snake, lying on its belly, working that thing down its gullet, tossing its head back and forth as it forced the oversized item down. Amazing. You can see its tiny wings thrown out for leverage. There are nine in this nest. Thereby hangs another story for another time. Yes, that's my doing, too. Update: All nine of the chicks in the photo below are fledging as of 11 AM Thursday, May 26! Lots of chickadee-dee-deeing going on in the backyard right now, clown-lipped babies popping their heads out of the hole...what joy!

In any clutch, I find the runt (see it at the bottom) usually begs the most vigorously. I love runts.  They know they have some catching up to do. These are bluebirds, about Day 6.

 Here's a nest of 11-day-old bluebirds with their bug omelet. I use a bent dentist's forceps for feeding.  I had to force-feed about half the bluebirds since they wouldn't gape. The older they are, the less likely they are to gape, even if they're starving. They're suspicious of this big colorful ape with a forceps.

The tree swallows sat moping, hungry in the rain, but they ignored both bug omelet and live mealworms placed on their box tops. They'd just step aside as a mealworm would crawl by. Aerial insectivores are very tough to help, being hard-wired to take their food only on the wing.

Hang in there, little swallow. The rain will stop, sometime.

Luckily this pair had only eggs yet laid. Five, and they kept them warm through the cold spell.

It was a heck of a day. I gave up on accomplishing anything but pulling these baby birds through. I just stayed in my rain suit and tromped from box to box.

photo by Liam Thompson

But the rewards were immense--live, warm baby bluebirds and chickadees, who were 100% stronger and healthier at the end of that long, long day than they were at its start. They'd all have died if I hadn't made the effort, and knowing that made it all worthwhile.

photo by Liam Thompson

My photographer was pleased, too.

monkeycam photo by Liam Thompson

Saving Baby Birds

 I remember a stranger at college coming up and introducing himself, saying that he knew me because someone had told him to look out for an “unusual-looking woman on roller skates.” After thinking about whether I like that description for oh, thirty years, I have embraced it. Unusual works for me. There are a couple of ways in which I am unusual, which readers of this blog will probably readily identify. I can see you there, wagging your hands wildly. “I know! I know!”  No, it’s not being able to identify any kind of animal poop, though that certainly plays a part in my makeup. Here, it’s about feeling unusually responsible for birds.

 I have this trail of bluebird nest boxes, about 25 or so, that I check once a week from April through August. And pretty much every year there is a period when, if I didn’t do something unusual, birds in those boxes would die. We’ve just made it through such a time, in this thoroughly crappy, cold, rainy spring—three days of steady rain and fog, when the mercury barely inched above 50 degrees. Arrrrghh. And baby bluebirds and Carolina chickadees in many of my boxes, slowly starving.

 I went out the afternoon of May 17 to check my boxes. It had been raining and cold for two days straight, temperatures barely inching into the 50's. Opening boxes in weather like that is the opposite of Christmas morning. 

Sure enough, the first box I opened held five perfect, perfectly cold and dead baby bluebirds. My stomach turned into a rock. I was too late to save them.

When it's cold and rainy, the parent birds can't find enough food for their young, or even for themselves. Sometimes the parents get soaked to the skin and can hardly fly. Then their own survival is in question. So they wisely give up and just save themselves. They'll quit incubating near-term eggs; they'll quit feeding starving young. I've lost two clutches of near-term bluebird eggs from abandonment this spring. The birds couldn't find enough to eat to sustain themselves while sitting, and they knew they'd never be able to feed their babies when they hatched. And this is the latest spring on record for bluebird nesting. They waited and waited to lay this year. They knew it was going to be a real bummer of a spring, long before we did.

Ironically, the older the baby birds are when it hits, the more likely they are to succumb to cold and rain. Once baby birds are feathered, the female won't brood them any more, and they get chilled a lot faster than naked young birds who are still being sat upon. Like these in our driveway box, who were very hungry, but still toasty warm:

After that first nasty shock, I found all the other bluebirds and Carolina chickadees in my boxes still warm and clinging to life. They were weak and hungry, but they were alive.

And I had the answer, kept warm in an insulated container, with me. I call it Bug Omelet.

It's scrambled egg with...additions.

Which include dried fly (Musca domestica) larvae (available from Oregon Feeder Insects)

and ground, baked eggshells.

 You fold this all together and fry 'er up in a little butter. Mmmm, nauseating.

But Bug Omelet is superfood for starving baby birds. I have wildlife rehabilitator Astrid MacLeod to thank for this wonderful recipe. I love it because I can keep the dried fly larvae in a big ol’ jar in the cupboard and I always have eggs and eggshell on hand, so I’m ready to feed starving baby birds at the drop of a hat.

 I keep it right next to the eye of newt and toe of frog.


Unusual.

Next: Come with me on my bird-saving rounds.