Breakfast with Sparrows

Oh how lucky am I? It was just two year ago that I saw my first bird nest ever (a long tailed grackle's), and even though it was quite obscured by leaves from my vantage point, many mornings I watched in the mist before the sun rose, in my pj's, with bad binoculars, the mother feeding what I could see of a grey baby in the nest.I was in a high rise and my porch was about a floor above the tree top that the nest was in.

Flash forward to last week, I was having a now-rare outing to a coffee shop which is flanked on each side by ivy covered brick, with plentiful live Oak trees all around it's small parking lot. Optimal setting for a nursery, I guess, as there are bird nests everywhere.

Picnic tables are out in case you want to enjoy the setting, which I do, as in the next month or so, the heat will be prohibitive. While sitting outside with my berry scone and decaf au lait, I completely ignored their flimsy "do not feed the birds" sign and made sure some crumbs happened to be on the table top. I got to witness a mother feeding breakfast to her fledgeling, and actually got it on film, so you can too!



Actually, the thrill is that she took a crumb right from my fingers, which I caught (akwardly) on a different clip.

I've come to recognize fledgelings. They chirp A LOT (even in the bird world, kids are demanding and endlessly so) and flutter their little wings with such animation as they do... not sure if it's just getting them strong, or if they just don't have control of them yet, or if it serves another purpose (if you do know, will you comment?). You can see that though this little one's still chirping and wing-beating for mom to feed him or her, it manages to peck at a crumb here and there.



Flash Forward again -- Two days after I shot this, I was in the Wildlife Rehab Center, and the inn is full, so to speak. Baby bird season is in full swing and the incubators are packed with eggs that people brought it, and all kinds of birds in every stage of development. Starlings, Killdeer, sparrows, rock doves, pigeons, grackles, herons.... I was opening the tank lids and, as if I was on the edge of their nests this time, the many little mouths with developing beaks opened WIDE to me, exposing tender pink throats, their heavy heads still wobbly on their necks.

I went down the line feeding tiny berries, crickets and soaked catfood pellets to each, depending on their size and diet, with a tweezer (essentially my beak), playing mother to them all.

I simply can't believe I get to do these things.