Reason for Some of the Racket

I'm a sucker for animals, so last night I put out some stale bread for the birds and waited to see who showed up. Plenty of robins descended as did a few black birds and some other smaller ones that I didn't recognize.

After awhile I noticed this little guy was perched on one of our lawn chairs. He eyed me suspiciously when I ventured out in to the yard. I figured he would fly away; however, he did not. As I looked at him more, I realized he was just a baby. He wasn't going anywhere. He was fastened to that chair.

He continued to eye me up as I reached out and stroked his head, back, and tummy. Remember, that old wives tale about finding an egg or baby bird and not to touch it because the mother bird would smell your scent on it and abandon it. Hogwash. That's just a tale to keep children from messing with birds.

I tried putting some bread crumbs on the chair for him, but he's a baby right, he probably still eats regurgitated worms from his mother. Well, there was NO WAY I was going to chew up a worm for this guy no matter how pitiful he looked. If KoKo were home, I might have been able to convince her, but she was visiting her dad.

I decided the cats in the house. Einstein was eyeing him up from the porch. Then I heard a familiar squawk coming from the tree above the bird. It was his mother (I assume). She was giving him (or me) hell. Either way, I retreated to the front porch.

I could hear his mother screeching continuously as she flew from tree to roof to tree to roof again, urging her baby to take flight. I was pulling for him too. I was just hoping no other cats would venture into the neighborhood or that he'd not end up ant food like several other bird carcases I've found.

When I checked on him later in the evening, he was gone. All that scolding must have paid off.

Then this morning as Kristie was getting ready for work she mentioned how cute the little baby was.

Damn it, he's back at it, I thought. And so was his mother giving him another dose of hell from the trees.

Kristie said I should get a picture of the little guy. This was good motivation for getting out of bed since there was no way I was going to get back to sleep with that mother bird screeching away.

So I ventured out and snapped a couple of pictures. This time the little guy looked like he was actually about to fly off, but he couldn't quite pull it off.



If all blue jays have this much trouble learning how to fly, no wonder there are so few around here - Einstein would have had him for lunch a long time ago.

But the good news is that I kept Einer in the house and when I went back to check on the bird, he was gone and his mother has finally silenced her racket. Or at least taken it to another neighborhood.

It's still better than that damn dog down the street!