 Alberta Bird During the hottest day of our recent mini heat wave I received an avian 911 phone call - a baby bird in a dire predicament. Ironically, at the very time the call came in, I happened to be boiling a few eggs for potato salad. It seems that a truck driver parked his trailer by Halcro arena then discovered a bird nest among the machinery being hauled from Edmonton, Alberta. The truck driver called the local paper, and the local paper called me. They asked if I knew what type of nestling was involved and further speculated on whether the parent birds followed the nest all the way from Alberta. I dismissed the possibility of the parent birds still being around as nothing short of a miracle. I don’t relish ‘rescuing’ young birds. Care by humans is always intrusive and often tragic. However, when I heard the details, I realized some urgency was required. Big trucks parked by the arena generally do not stay around for long, and the current trucks already were parked for at least a day. If a baby bird was still alive after a journey of several hundred miles it would have had no food or water for at least three days. If a young bird could hang on this long in this heat without its parents, then I felt it was also my duty to venture forth and see if I help out. So I put my own lunch aside and mixed a bit of chopped beef and water in a sandwich bag as a meal for the nestling. Armed with the sandwich bag and a pair of tweezers I headed for Halcro arena. There was no need to ponder which large vehicle held the nest. I heard the nestling call even before parking the car. I stopped, donned my straw hat, and stepped from the car under an unforgiving afternoon sun. I walked toward the sound and noted that all the vehicles in the caravan were not mobile. Some were just machines without tires, plopped onto trailers for transport. The bird nest sat in an obvious location but the baby bird was not in sight. I stepped onto the trailer and suddenly a baby bird reared up calling. It was a young robin. I used the tweezers and picked up a wad of the beef from the sandwich bag then held my offering over the nestling. The young bird crouched and opened its beak without hesitation. I fed it more of the moistened meat and marveled at the bird’s ability to stay alive so long without any kind of care. There was little doubt that the nest and nestling would have to be moved before the trucks left with their cargo. I gave the nestling a substantial helping of food then walked over to a nearby office building to call the paper and the Ministry of Environment. I told a reporter that the young bird was a Robin and there were no parent birds around. I usually have a difficult time finding the phone number of the MOE (Ministry Of Environment) so I drove over to their office to tell them that I wanted to move the bird, but the door was locked. I felt the young bird was taken care of in the short term and had visions of returning the next day, so I decided to return home, wait for the day to cool, and hatch a plan for dealing with the orphaned Robin. I stopped at the newspaper on the way home and discovered that the trucks were leaving that night. Something needed to be done quickly. I returned home, did a few chores, prepared some more food for the bird, retrieved a bird cage, and then headed back to the arena area about 7 pm with a second sandwich bag containing beef soaked in water. I turned left onto airport road just behind the tractor that was to pull the trailer with the bird nest. I watched the tractor clank into position under the trailer hitch then I walked up to the driver and explained the situation. He said it was safe to climb up on the trailer. This time no sound came from the nest so I reached over the rim and tapped the empty cup. The nestling had gone. Over the roar of the truck engine I heard a bird call from the grass along the airport runway. It had to be the nestling Robin walking about in the tall grass braving the always-hungry Crows, and braving a phalanx of Ring-billed Gulls which stood nearby on the airport tarmac. It was amazing that a half-starved, ignorant in the ways of the world, juvenile Robin made it this far. Now, with a truck driver watching, and a pilot car driver watching, and an assistant who stood by with some bird food, I carefully trod through the tall grass turning this way and that as each call redirected my efforts. I spotted the young Robin and reached over with tweezers full of food. While I scooped food from the sandwich bag the young Robin struggled to shorten the distance between us, an effort made difficult by all the long grass. This amazed me. A defenseless small bird saw the hulking creature looming over it as an acceptable surrogate parent bird. A few more mouthfuls of food and the Robin could be moved. I slid my hand under the bird and it stepped willingly onto my hand. With the bird thus perched, like a Peregrine ready for the hunt, I rose from the grass and carried it toward the fence. I passed under a rusty strand of barbed wire on the way and the young bird ducked its head as I did and watched the wire carefully as we passed under. One of the truckers now informed me that this morning there had been three young Robins in the nest. I put the nestling into the cage, (a situation it seemed to abhor,) and then went to look for its siblings. After a bit of a search we located another young Robin sitting on the marsh margin in the tule rushes. It was badly positioned and the more I tried to close the gap between us the deeper it crept into the marsh. I saw no way to approach the bird so I fashioned a feeder from a tule rush stem and then used the fishing-rod-like invention to feed the bird. It ate willingly but still would not allow me to approach, so I left it and hoped that it might somehow find a way to survive. At the truck drivers urging I stepped onto the trailer and retrieved the robin nest. Inadvertently, or on purpose, the parent Robins had anchored the structure behind a raised bolt head and it was a real struggle to dislodge. It was a mess and I decided the young bird would be better off without the nest. Back home, I walked up the footpath with my caged baby Robin. The yard Robins were busy hanging about with their own newly fledged young. It was an ideal moment for releasing the orphan. I would let it out of the cage and the yard Robins would become foster parents. I reached in the cage and tried to get the fledgling to leave. The fledgling began screeching. Hearing the cry of distress the adult yard Robins flew into a rage. One landed right next to me screeching, the other backed it up with more yelling from above. I managed to extract the orphan from the cage and went in the house to watch. The adult Robins quickly calmed down and drew near the young bird. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional, but they appeared to lead the orphaned bird to the west of the house where I assumed they had their most recent nest. I heard the young Robin call intermittently then night fell and all grew silent. I hoped the nestling’s new parents took care, but there was no way to know for sure. It was back in the world it knew. The circumstances separating it from its natural parents were strange but perhaps if it survived, it could tell its own children of its first migration, taken days before it had even left the nest. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
