It was a dark and stormy night. I heard faint bird cheeping coming from the roof. Then a great crash of lightning and a gust of wind and suddenly loud bird cheeping from the fireplace . . . .
I look inside, and there’s a busted sparrow’s nest and a little glob of baby sparrows in there.
My 16 yr old daughter goes crazy over them. I look on the local animal rescue web site, which says to put them up in a tree and let the parents find 'em. No problem, I figure, I’ll just put them out in the morning. It’s raining cats and dogs anyway.
But . . . in the morning . . . one of the parents has found its way down the chimney and is now trapped in the fireplace with them. We have a solid week of thunderstorms forecast, which makes outdoor nesting conditions unfavorable, and I am not at all sure that I can flush the adult out of there and keep them all together. So, my daughter & I decide that we’ll have to feed the mom, and let her feed the babies, until they’re big enough to move. So off we go to the feed store for some wildseed and some worms . . . .
Fireplace week 1. Notice the worm in the white bowl waiting on mama to serve him up.
Fireplace week 2. They are growing, but God, these birds are loud at sunrise . . .
Two weeks come to an end and they look like real fledges. The thunderstorms are over for a few days. Out to the new nest (cut out of a milk jug) in the tree out front. This is about 15 ft off the ground.
All grown up.
An interesting diversion, birds in the fireplace, but not one I am anxious to repeat. So I’ll be getting the sweeps who live in the Sikh Ashram a couple blocks over to come sweep the chimney, and then I’ll be putting a screened cap on it.
It would appear so. It’s dusk now, but I could see some big wings in there with the little wings from the ground. Once I got the fledges out, I stuck a broom into the fireplace to try to flush Mama over the hearth and out the front door, but she went the other way and actually walked up the bricks inside the fireplace and went out the chimney. Sparrows are amazing.
I will check them again in the morning just to be sure. I still have a couple of worms left and I’d kinda like to get them out of the fridge . . . .
We had the same at work 5 or so small birds flopping around on the floor . If they can still chirp ,mom will feed them “as in - well that first attempt at flight was a not so good” . We pulled two out of a covered drain / forklifts - chains - lights - ladders .
One of the Boss’s gave me his fortune cookie strip from a Chinese dinner .
" kindness to a small creature will be repaid 10 fold " I am still waiting .
Great work. Last summer, we left our garage door open one day in the late spring. In that one day a family of house finches took up residence. I was leary about keeping them there, but we had just lost our dogs and were feeling a little emotional…so the birds stayed. 4 broods later they finally left the garage in late September. This spring our garage was shut tighter than Fort Knox.
" kindness to a small creature will be repaid 10 fold " I am still waiting .
Thanks for that, Heli. Looks like we’re both in for 50. In my case I’m hoping not to be repaid 50-fold in worms. Or maybe the two dozen worms I fed them go against the 5 birds. I’ve never been too good at figuring the Karmic calculus.
I was glad we let them stay (in hindsight), but it won’t happen again. Sometime around August, I was thinking that world could probably do with a few less house finches. My conscience (read my wife) kept me on the straight and narrow though. This spring, if the door was open even long enough to mow the lawn, those industrious creatures could get half a nest made.
It is a good thing to give these animals a chance. But I don’t have any problem trying to prevent them from infiltrating our homes either.
