Birds

It's a funny thing about birds. They're so fun to watch, and yet, when I find myself sitting by the window watching the birds, I do occasionally have a moment of panic, when I think "Oh my gosh, I'm turning into an old lady!". But I really do love them and I think I always have.

We've had a couple of close encounters with the birds lately, specifically, they've been in our garage. This spring, we had a hummingbird in the garage and Cliff spent a half an hour watching the poor thing fly around trying to get out. When it was finally tired enough that Cliff could just pick it up, he let it go outside and we assume it recovered fine.

Then last week, Gavin and I walked out into the garage only to see a young goldfinch fly across the garage and get stuck right to the fly strip that is hanging near Cliff's workbench. I suppose that's my fault - Cliff usually works in the garage at night, after Gavin is in bed, and the bugs tend to be attracted to the light over his work bench, so I suggested he hang a fly strip up there so that the bugs don't, well, bug him. Little did I know that birds stick to fly strips too! The poor little thing was hanging by a wing and was getting more and more stuck by the second. I climbed up on top of a swiveling workbench-stool and gently pulled the bird from the sticky tape. The poor little girl was nervous, but I quickly cleaned off as much of the sticky stuff from her wing as I could, let Gavin take a closer look at her, and then set her down in the grass. Her wing was still too sticky to open up so she could fly and she hopped into the flowerbed. Although she climbed deep into one of the Astilbe plants, I knew that she was too close to the house and would be easily found there by Drake or something else, so I picked her up again and put her down on the edge of the grass on the far side of the driveway, close to the tall brush along the edge of our yard. She hopped and Gavin followed. He was so excited to be so close to her. She hopped a few steps closer to the tall brush and he took another step to follow her. After she made it to the edge of the brush, I called him back up to the house. We did take a picture of Gavin looking at the sweet little bird, but I'm not exactly sure where it ended up among my tens of thousands of photos stored on my computer.

Then last Saturday, Cliff and Gavin went into the garage and there was a baby flycatcher in there, trying to get out. Cliff rescued it, gave Gavin a peek, and let it go. Then on Sunday morning we all went out into the garage and there was another small bird. I didn't get a good look at that one, but maybe another flycatcher. We didn't catch that one, but opened the garage doors up and shooed it out. Do you suppose the flycatchers are hanging out by the sticky fly strip / tape for an easy lunch?   

Smart little guys!