SOME MID-SUMMER MUSINGS (8/04/00)

Have you been noticing some strange looking birds at your feeders lately? Maybe your cardinals look like ours, washed out and bedraggled. Some are probably parents on the ragged edge of taking care of one or two broods of young ones. Others may be the young, still in fledgling garb.

We’ve also been hearing many strange calls from our yard. What was that?” we’ve queried a number of times. “That” has turned out to be either a young blue jay or a young crow using their begging voices maybe for the first time. Young crows have been more in evidence this summer than any other one I can remember. In fact, it seems that our yard birds have raised rather good crops of young ‘uns this year. We have chickadees by the dozens and more house finches than we’ve seen in a long time. I thought the long, cold spring was going to wreak havoc with the nestlings, but I’m glad to say, I was obviously wrong.

Speaking of baby birds, early summer is definitely their season! This is the time of year when a few run into trouble by falling out of their nests or are perceived to have done so. I’ve said it before, but I’ll remind you again. It is against the law to possess any wild bird — except a pigeon, starling or house sparrow — for any reason, even to nurse it back to health, unless you have a license. Injured birds of any kind should go to a licensed rehabilitator, such as Wild Care on Cape Cod.

Baby birds that are feathered are close to being on their own. Often, they have already fledged their nest properly and only appear to have fallen out. When parents leave their young, they often command them to stay still, so what you have encountered may not be a lost or abandoned bird but one that is beautifully trained and that is minding its elders. Leave a fully feathered bird alone and keep cats and children away.

However, when it comes to a baby bird that is not fully feathered, try to restore it to its nest. When that is impossible, then make a substitute nest by lining a small box like one that holds berries or Kleenex with shredded newspaper and tying it in place at the top of a bush or on a low branch of a tree. Forget old wives' tales that if a baby bird is handled by humans, the parents won't have anything more to do with it. On the contrary, parent birds will respond to the cries of the baby and will continue to care for it.

If the baby bird has been brought by a cat or dog from somewhere else and you cannot get it to a rehabilitator, then I say you and the bird would be best served if you just let it die. I know that sounds hard hearted, but baby birds need a lot of care, and most people who take in young birds believe they are improving the bird's chances for survival, but it is almost impossible for people to provide growing young birds with conditions which duplicate the ones the natural parents provide.

Goldfinches have been having a lovely summer. Soon it will be their time to do the parenting bit, but they wait until thistle down is available for lining their nests before they get in the family way. If thistle’s not available, I don’t know what they use. Speaking of thistle, the seed that they devour so quickly is not related to our native thistle. It’s actually niger seed, an Ethiopian native.

Adult crows have been strongly attracted to our new suet cake site. Naturally, this is easier pickins than foraging through Mother Nature’s pantry, so despite my flamboyant shooing, they brave raid after raid on this most tantalizing food. Starlings, too, made this discovery much to our chagrin. In less than a day, they can down a whole cake that used to take the woodpeckers a week, and, while they’re there, hogging the suet, they keep the downys and hairys, the chickadees and other small birds that relish the energy pick-up of a snack of suet from eating.

While I realize that some readers enjoy all birds equally and therefore do not share my dislike of starlings, I know that I do have fellow sympathizers out there as well. Starlings, introduced from Europe sometime in the last century, cause great hardship for some of our native birds. Their gobbling down a whole chunk of suet in a day is just one example; their taking over of many natural nest holes is another. They are so brazen that they now ignore my noisy suggestions that they leave..

We have been so pleased to see a female hummingbird visiting our impatiens and trumpet vine! We know we have a pair of hummers nesting in our yard, as we see them consistently from spring right through the summer, but we’ve never been able to find a nest.

Rounding out the subject of quantity of young ones, the same goes for squirrels. We’ve never seen so many. We’ve beefed up our baffles and other ploys to make it more difficult for these critters to access the hanging feeder. There have been a lot of dramatic misses, but some persist until they finally work out a method that will work.