I hung some wren nestboxes out in the front of the house, and wrens promptly took up residence. I so enjoy listening to the babies loudly proclaiming their desperate need for food, and watching the mother sitting on a nearby branch yelling at me to go away so she can feed her young.
The other morning I was down at the barn feeding the animals, and I heard a bird chirping from the back of the barn, up in the rafters. I didn't think much about it, because birds do sometimes come into the barn, and sometimes they've even made nests in the rafters. But while I was mucking and ended up back near where the sound was coming from, I looked up and saw the bird sitting in the corner, surrounded by spider webs.
It was semi-dark, so I couldn't see it very well. I figured it was just lost, so I cleared out the spider webs and moved away to finish my chores, thinking it would fly out of the barn.
A little later, as I was putting down new bedding, I heard the chirping coming from the floor in the stall next to me. The little bird had flown down into the straw. I watched it attempt to fly back up again, but it was unable to fly up more than a foot or so. I started to realize that what I was seeing was a fledgling that had either flown into the barn and gotten stuck, or had been in one of the nests and was just learning to fly. I also realized that what I was seeing was a baby wren.
I've had some painful lessons about the merits of letting nature take its course, so I was just going to leave the little bird alone to figure things out. I was about to finish up and leave the barn, but I decided to put down a little more bedding first. It's fortunate that I did, because when I came back from getting a bucket of bedding pellets upstairs, Smoky, one of the barncats, was in the stall watching the baby bird. She was creeping closer, getting ready to pounce, and the little bird was just sitting there in the straw next to the wall. I don't think it was aware of its danger.
Time to intervene. I hurried around to the front of the stall and opened the door, yelling at Smoky, who ignored me at first. But as I got within a couple of feet of her, she remembered she was scared of me and ran away. I grabbed for the little bird, which did its best to fly away but got stuck in a corner, bumbling into a bunch more spider webs. Poor little thing was practically blinded by the webs at that point.
I plucked the little bird out of the midst of the webs and carried it gently outside. Needless to say, it was very distraught, cheeping and struggling in my hand, no doubt certain it was about to be eaten for dinner. I cleaned the webs off its face and carried it out to a clump of small trees and honeysuckle vines along a fence. A day earlier, I'd noticed an adult wren sitting near that spot, loudly scolding a cat, so I figured that was probably the mother.
I opened my hand, and the little bird hopped into the vines and disappeared. I just hope it was able to find its mother, but I think if it hadn't I probably would have heard it calling for her later.
I love these little adventures where I get to interact briefly with nature. It's such an honor to get close to one of these wild critters, and especially to actually be able to help one.
No comments:
Post a Comment