The Western Kingbird Adventure

After volunteering in a wildlife rescue in Tahoe for years, I learned a lot about raising chicks. June is chick season, but I was never involved in the glorious release of all these little birds into

Photo by Chandler Cruttenden on Unsplash

The Western The animals on our property are what keep me sane whenever the news gets too much to handle. When we had chickens a few years ago, those girls never ceased to entertain. Just when I thought they were providing enough drama to satisfy my soap opera needs, a fledgling chick lying on the ground changed the whole dynamic of my life. I became a parent again.

To begin this tale, the hens started beating up on the Buff Orpington, the little blonde in a flock of sexlinks. When she wedged herself under the retaining wall in the run, it was time to separate her. I set up a folding cage and a clean nesting box. She immediately adapted to her own personal condo, laying her first egg in the box after a week. I took that as a sign that things in one small portion of the world were going work. Problem solved.

Then I turned around and found the chick languishing there in the grass near its dead sibling, looking desperate and vulnerable. Mumsy and Dad were nowhere to be seen nor heard. Apparently, they had dumped both chicks and abandoned their parental duties. Buzz, my cattledog, leered from a few feet away, looking very hungry for this tiny nosh. I scooped up the chick and returned to the house to figure out a solution to this newest dilemma. Rescuing wild animals does something to your psyche, pushing you to save every animal in distress. It's a deep, dark rabbit hole that defies escape. Now I was poised on the threshold, I would fall in if I wasn't prudent.

photo by Sue Cauhape

All my shoeboxes were gone, so I improvised with a flowerpot and some dried grass from the yard. Then I moistened a handful of chicken feed into a lumpy cereal. The hungry chick gaped wide for anything and accepted the mush eagerly.

Jeff and I got the wee tyke through that first day. After purchasing a container of mealworms, the second day marked another success. There were fifty worms in the container, but they were so tiny, the bird snarfed through them quickly. So, while Jeff bird-sat, I bought three containers of "super worms," then spent several hours at the salon getting nails and hair done.

Bad idea!

Funny thing about living on a rotating planet. You park in the shade and in no time at all, the sun comes around to heat up the car and bake any living thing inside it. Including mealworms.

The chick ate the freshly dead worms anyway ... for a while. It soon became apparent I'd have to buy fresh, LIVE ones. Chick had tasted the living flesh of an earthworm that had crawled onto the patio and she wanted more. Once you've tasted Live meat, you never go back.

On my way to the fabric store the next morning, little chick and I stopped in at the UNR Cooperative Extension. Steve Lewis and his informative gang cooed and aaahhhed over the wee birdie, snapping photos and whipping through reference books. Steve later emailed me with the news that it was a Kingbird.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Now I know what those big yellow birds are in the elm trees busy feeding their young and seizing insects out of the air. Western Kingbirds.

After a week of stuffing mealworms and moistened chickenfeed into the gaping beak of a kingbird chick, all the pinfeathers have disappeared, the wings have been tested inside the house, and she had survived a chilly desert night in a cage on the patio.

When I check on her, I spotted an adult kingbird responding to her chirping. Here was an inopportune opportunity. Was she ready? Would this other kingbird foster her? I decided to feed her one last time before closing her in the cage for the night. After a fat juicy mealworm slid down her throat, she didn't want to go perch in her cage. So I held her on my hand for a while as she preened a few errant "fuzzies" off her breast and wing. Then she started moving as though she wanted to fly.

She pumped her legs up and down like springboards, her wings opening just a tiny bit away from her body. Then she jumped and spread her wings, landing clumsily on a thin branch of the wisteria. I let her stay there while I took a few photos.

Actually, there was really no way to get her back. As I reached up to get her, she launched to a tree about twenty feet away. From there, she chirped and called out to that adult kingbird to come tend to her.

photo by Sue Cauhape

This was a here's your one chance, Fancy moment. Throughout that night, I lay awake like a mother waiting for a rebellious teenager to come home. Her calls emanated from different locations around the house. All night long, that desperate, pleading song tortured my sleep. But she was still alive, that was certain. As long as she cried, she was alive.

At last, morning arrived. I heard her call from the tree just outside the front door. She perched there, looking down at me on the porch. There was a different aspect about her, a confidence that lifted her off that branch into a lovely glide across the span between limb and eave. She landed like a pro and peered down at me again as if to assure me that "I'm going to be okay. I got this, Mom."

You would think I would feel a sense of accomplishment, but instead, I experienced an "empty nest" feeling of loss. The melancholy lasted through the morning, but dissipated by evening when I no longer heard her voice ringing through the trees. She was gone, hopefully with that adult kingbird that may have helped her survive that horrible night.

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This whole scenario took place in 2012. Recently, a pair of kingbirds returned to our yard, calling out to each other. I know it's an absurd long shot, but I hoped one of them was the chick I raised coming around for a visit. Perhaps a descendent. I need a little fantasy to get through the day.

Such is life around my little acre. The world can be on the Eve of Destruction, but animal dramas bring me back to reality. There's always magic and wonder to be found in the natural world when we focus on our spheres of influence instead of all the crises that lie beyond our control.

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