A Little Birdy Told Me...

...to stay the Hell away from her babies!



I tried to play mother bird the other day. When I went outside to check up on the three little baby birds in the nest in our yard, I noticed that two of the three baby birds were gone and that the mother was nowhere in sight. I kept checking up on the lone baby bird for most of the day and the mother bird was never there. Some time around the end of the day, I began to get concerned for the remaining baby bird's well being. I figured that the baby bird might have been abandoned by it's mother after the other two babies flew the coop.

I did some research on the Internet about how to care for an abandoned baby bird. All of the sites I visited on the 'net, however, told me not to try to care for the bird. Instead, they all recommended that I take the bird to a local animal rescue facility.

Hogwash! I'm sure that I can take care of a baby bird. How hard can that be?

"Let's see. I'm going to need some worms," I thought to myself. So, I went digging around the yard, hunting for worms. Since the ground was not all that moist due to a lack of recent rainfall, I was not having much luck finding a suitable meal for my newly adopted little baby. Finally, I found a couple of small earthworms under a rock. They were not all that big, but they would have to do.

I remembered from somewhere, possibly the Discovery Channel, that mother birds usually eat their baby's food first and then regurgitate it back up and feed it to the baby bird. Um, well... that wasn't going to happen. This baby bird was going to have to eat his worms raw.

So, I reached my hand slowly into the tree, towards the nest, with the tiny worms wriggling and dangling from my fingers. I was trying to make this meal look appetizing to the little baby bird and I figured the more wriggle, the better.

Well, I guess that baby birds aren't too thrilled about having big old human hands intruding into their nest space, even with tasty worms dangling from their fingers, because when I got too close, the little baby bird took off out of the nest and sort of flew to the ground, screeching all of the way down.

It was right at this moment, that the mother bird returned to her nest and, seeing that I was attacking her little baby, she went a little crazy. She flew round my head and screeched and squawked like a mad-bird. She chased me around the yard, trying her hardest to scare me away. It worked. I certainly wasn't going to stand around while some insane mother bird pecked my eyes out. I hightailed it into the house.

After allowing the mother bird a few minutes to cool down, I went back outside to check up on the situation. The little baby bird was still out there on the ground, so I carefully lifted it back up into the nest. The mother bird was still there too, although she was not quite as riled up as she had been. She stayed her distance, thankfully. She gave me a few disapproving screeches as I fondled her little baby, but she didn't try to peck my eyes out this time.

I think from now on though, whenever I see baby birds in a nest, I'll admire them from afar. No more interfering with good 'ol Mother Nature. Yep, I think I'll leave all that bird rearing stuff to the experts...


Interesting Funny Fact: The scientific name for the American Robin is Turdus migratorius. Bwah ha ha! Really! I'm not making that up! Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!