Baby Birder

Harry the Big Brown Bat

2012-01-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

*Disclaimer - I am not an expert in wildlife rehabilitation, nor bats, but worked under the supervision of someone who was. Please don't use this as a guide of what to do if you find a bat. Please contact someone in your area who is licensed for wildlife rehabilitation before approaching the animal. There is no test for rabies in a live animal or human. If you are bitten or scratched by a rabies vector species (bats, raccoons, etc.) the only way to be sure that you have not gotten rabies is to have the animal killed and have their body tested. It is much less traumatic to all involved to not approach the animal until you've contacted the proper authorities.*

(Warning... this ends in a cliffhanger with no answer, only hope.)

Four days ago while working in our garage on a lazy Sunday, I happened upon a small bat laying in the bottom of a large empty pot that last summer had held a tomato plant. I moved the pot slightly to see if the bat was alive and the bat made the slightest movement, just enough to let me know not to throw him out!

I covered the pot with a tubtrug and immediately emailed the incomparable Julie Zickefoose, for advice. Julie rehabilitated two bats a couple years ago, and detailed the experience on her blog. I was careful not to approach the bat because of worries about rabies or other diseases it could be carrying, in addition to not wanting to hurt or stress it further. Julie was gracious enough to walk me through step by step everything I should do to help the bat.

I prepared a plastic critter container that once held a leopard gecko as I brought her home from the pet store. I lined it with a terry cloth towel, got a small syringe to offer water, and tweezers to offer mealworms. I donned thick gardening gloves, long sleeves, eye, nose, and mouth protection, and very gently picked up the bat. The bat's tiny claws grabbed onto my glove during the brief transfer to the new "bat house" and I was able to check the bat's underside. Congratulations, it's a boy! I named him Harry because I found him in a pot (Harry... Pot-ter... ba-dum bum).

Do you remember the movie Ferngully, and the bat named Batty? "I have but one claw... but BEWARE!"

I spent a futile 5 minutes trying to make him drink or eat, but he was not having it. In Julie's words, "Hibernation's like that."

He was safe in his padded new habitat, and I turned off the garage lights so he could get some sleep. The next morning, I found him hanging upside down like the bats you see hanging in caves. I took this as a very good sign that he was performing instinctive behaviors, instead of just laying flat like when I found him. I left some mealworms in case he decided he was hungry during the day.

I could not wait to get home that night to see how he was doing. He was much more active than the day before, and drank several cc's of water from a dropper (not all of it went into his mouth, but alot of it did!). He still did not seem interested in the mealworms, so I left some in his container and went to bed. The mealworms were still there as I left for work Wednesday morning.

Wednesday's high was 21 degrees, and our garage is attached to our house, but unheated, so I fully expected him to still be in a state of torpor when I got home. Boy, was I wrong! He was bright, alert, and when I approched, making the chattering noises Julie told me about. I took the lid off of the container and to my surprise, the mealworms had been replaced with droppings!

I was so excited to see that his digestive tract was working well that I ran to get more mealworms to see if he would eat again. And did he eat! I offered one mealworm from tweezers and without bothering to sniff or check it out, he immediately grabbed it in his jaws and munched away as if he hadn't eaten all winter. I gave him a couple more and he ate those just as fast. After about 10 minutes, he had eaten at least 2 dozen mealworms!

I didn't want to take a chance of overfeeding and making him sick, so I stopped, and now that he was eating and drinking well, I felt comfortable with releasing him. Thursday was supposed to be a sunny, mild day with a high in the 40's, and I had the day off.

My sister Annie wanted to come up to meet Harry and help with his release. We took some pictures while we were still in the garage that Harry had called home for the past four days, and offered some mealworms and water to see if he was hungry or thirsty, which he was not.

He started moving around somewhat, and by 11am the temperatures had risen above freezing so we decided it was a good time to release him. I was worried that driving somewhere with him would warm him up too much, and get his brain going enough to find a way to escape into the car, so we decided to release him under the deck behind my house. We looked all around to find a guarded place that was still open enough for him to get out when he was ready. We decided that Annie would be the one to put him up in the release spot so that I could photograph the event.

During the process of all of this happening, our "neighborhood" cat, Panda Kitty, came running up from the woods to come visit us. He's the sweetest cat I've ever met (even though he's an "outside" cat, and I'm much more of a dog-person than a cat-person) and he just wants to be loved. He and Benji are best friends and the cat is not afraid of much.

Annie giving Panda Kitty some loving.

In attempt to get our attention, Panda crawled part way up the deck post we were working on to say Hi. This made me worried that he was going to try going after Harry, but he didn't seem at all interested in Harry or the critter container that once housed Harry, and my mind was much more concentrated on the task at hand. Panda crawled down and went over to sit on the air conditioner and groom himself. There are raccoon baffles on 7 of 8 deck posts that are along the edge of our deck, but the 8th one is right up against the house, so there's not room to wrap one all around the post. The raccoons haven't figured this out, so it hasn't bothered me much, we only get the occasional squirrel checking out the bird feeders and Panda Kitty looking for love up on the deck. He got tired of us not petting him, and crawled up the 8th post by the house to wait up on the deck for Benji to come out and see him.

Panda Kitty sitting on the hot tub cover on the deck.

The post where Harry was going was in the center under the deck, so it didn't have a baffle, but an animal crawling up it wouldn't lead them to the floor of the deck, so I've never worried about it before today.

It took several attempts of us perched upon cinderblocks to get high enough to get Harry up into his roost and get all of his claws detached from the glove at the same time. For a while we thought we might have to just leave the glove.

He finally released himself, but kept trying to crawl back out. One time, he fell to the ground after bouncing off of three hands attempting to catch him on his way down. He seemed stunned but unhurt. We loved on him a bit, then put him back up.

Take two

He continued to try to escape by crawling but not flying. We stretched out his wings a bit to make sure they were okay, and we didn't see any tears, bleeding, or anything that appeared un-bat-like. This time we got smart, and rather than trying to get him to release from the glove while up in his roost, we detached him from the glove down by the ground onto a 2 inch diameter stick.

It looks like he's smiling.

The stick fit easily into the hole and we pushed it up enough until it was wedged and it partially blocked the bottom opening enough to help keep him from falling back out but didn't block the top opening so he could still get out later in the evening when it got dark.

We took a few more pictures, and he appeared to be perched upside-down in his spot nicely. We decided to leave him alone for a while and let the sleepy little guy have some private time. We came back inside, washed our hands, and greeted our two very excited dogs :)

We went out onto the deck to enjoy the sun, play with Panda Kitty, and let the dogs eat the melting snow while they checked the yard for intruding deer and squirrels. The dogs played a bit and Panda Kitty enjoyed getting some affection in the sunshine. The dogs wanted to go back inside, so Annie and I made lunch and loaded Harry's pictures onto the computer and proceeded to oooh and aaah at his cuteness some more.

After eating, we wanted to go check on our baby and see him roosting and hibernating in his new "crib." We put our layers of warmth back on and the bat paparazzi traipsed back out into the cold half-melted yuckiness to annoy Harry one more time before fully leaving him to Mother Nature's care. We called to him as we walked up (as if we expected him to call back). I crawled up onto the cinderblock we used earlier and looked excitedly into the cavity, only to find it empty. The sticks we used to lift Harry into his roost were still wedged just as we had left them. We thought perhaps he had shifted positions to the other side of his roost. Nope, not there either. Not anywhere to be found. We looked everywhere on the underside of the deck, even getting a flashlight to check the very small dark nooks. No Harry. Our hearts sank as we hit our knees to delicately search the ground where we had just been standing. Annie commented rhetorically "Harry, this would be much easier if you were not brown." There is a wood pile 4 feet from the post where his roost was, and some stray wood pieces all around the ground under him. We gingerly lifted each piece hoping to see hair or hear chattering, but with each piece moved, hope of finding him grew more and more dim.

After having looked under every last piece of wood that was on the ground and carefully searching through the dead weeds, we decided that it was up to Mother Nature to care for Harry now, whatever had happened to him. The wonderful thing about Mother Nature is that she provides amazing camouflage, and there is a chance that he was somewhere within 10 feet of us hanging out and laughing internally at the crazy primates scouring the frozen ground for him. He was never ours to begin with, he was only entrusted to our care for a few days. Of course, there is also the chance that he was found by Panda Kitty and carried off to places unknown. We did what we could do, but this is an excellent lesson in choices and consequences. No matter how many "good deeds" Annie and I could have done for this bat, there is still the chance that our neighbor's choice to have an "outside" cat could have derailed our efforts. When you choose to have a pet, you must also choose to take care of it, which includes keeping your pet contained, whether it's a lizard in an aquarium, a dog on a leash, or a cat kept inside a house. There are entire websites and facebook pages devoted to keeping cats indoors.

I choose to stay positive about my time with Harry, knowing that I did the best I could have done for him. If I kept him any longer, he may have become reliant on me, had his hibernation cycle and metabolism disrupted, and could have been injured in the small container I had him in. I choose to remain positive and think that on the next warm evening that comes around, he will be out in my yard clearing it of insects who have taken flight that day, too.

The birds are back!

2010-03-29T04:44:00.000-07:00

I heard my first Eastern Towhee of spring last week, and finally saw him on Saturday! The rest of his friends can't be far behind!

Blogging

2009-12-14T20:12:00.001-08:00

Frozen Cardinal Kebobs

2009-12-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

Step 1. Pick a snowy day.

Step 2. Get some skewers.

Step 3. Impale Cardinal.

Ta-daaaaaa!

And this could have been such a nice serene snowy day bird post.

*No Cardinals were injured in the taking of this picture.

Huh?

Mutts 11-14-09

2009-11-28T05:30:00.001-08:00

Bluebirds!

2009-11-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

I've seen a few bluebirds before. At the park, near some rural fields, on a power line, but never at my house! Yesterday I looked outside and spotted no less than eight bluebirds munching on the poison ivy berries! I didn't think they'd come out this far out because it's pretty wooded here, though most of the people up here have at least an acre each cleared for their yards. The number of different birds I have seen on these vines in the last two weeks is making me really upset that we're planning on cutting the couple trees down in front of our house with the vines growing on them next spring. We're planning on digging out part of a small hillside to expand our front yard, put in a retaining wall, and make some new flowerbeds. But other than our deck out back, this is my prime birding spot (there is a multiflora rose brush pile around the bottoms of the tree where the ground feeders hang out too!) I am definitely going to have to get some bluebird boxes and other birdhouses up before next spring.

Notice the Junco eating the berries in the top left of this picture, too!

This adorable Carolina Wren has been hanging around the house the last couple weeks. Usually I hear him long before I see him, and he's so skittish, these are the only photos I've gotten of him!

White Throated Sparrows are loving the berries...

...and talking with their mouths open!

The cardinals have learned to levitate.

The song sparrow that has been hanging out almost exclusively in the big grassy plant that has gone to seed, finally came up to see what all the commotion was about at the feeder.

It's that time of year again... suet cupcakes!

"I just can't stop singing my praises for your suet dough recipie!"

Yum Yum

The feeder's spinning and I'm starting to get dizzy now.

This baby and it's sibling and mommy have been hanging out in our backyard all summer. When the babies still had spots, we were eating out on our deck, and they were just running around and frolicking for about 10 minutes! They weren't at all bothered by us. Now if they hear us they'll look, and occasionally walk back into the trees, but they don't seem to mind friends hanging out with them.

The sibling

Momma stood up to see what was happening when she heard me clicking away, then she went back to her lunch.

Picture Post

2009-11-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

I think this is a Yellow Rumped Warbler... I would love for anyone to help confirm or deny, please :) If so, it's another one to add to my list!

These pictures are all from the past 2 weeks or so... some of the "usual suspects" hanging out in the yard... and some just coming home for winter!

Red Bellies are one of my favorites.

He almost fell in to the burning ring of fire!

Polite dinner table discussions.

Welcome home, Juncos :)

This young guy has been hanging out around here since mid summer. I took a picture with the velvet still on his antlers, and didn't realize that most deer antlers aren't symmetrical. My husband told me they can be in about any shape and definitely don't have to match. This one has a fork at the top of his right antler, and a fork at the bottom of the left one.

This one's gonna need a new set of cheeks if he puts any more corn in there!

Coming soon: Purple Finches, White Throated and White Crowned Sparrows!

Introducing: Benji

2009-10-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

My apologies for lack of postings lately... I've been busy hanging out with my new friend, the flu. I'm feeling much better now, just the remnants of a cough left, which also seems to be on it's way out. The most painful part of this flu was sitting inside watching the beautiful last few days of fall foliage and not being able to get outside. It didn't stop me from picking up the camera a few times, and I've been outside for short times the last couple days.

And without further adieu, I would like you to meet my main man (other than my husband), Benji Roethlisberger, aka Mr. Ben, Little Ben, Little Man, My-Two-foot-long-hot-dog, and many others. Yes, he is named after the Steelers' Quarterback, "Big Ben" Roethlisberger, and has a jersey in his size.

Benji already had a name when I adopted him from the Belmont County Animal Shelter in Eastern Ohio. I was going to adopt a dog, and found an adorable little girl named Tia on their Petfinder website, she was a smiley Westie mix. I went to meet Tia and that cute smile in her photograph turned out to be a snarl and growl. Okay, well, maybe Tia's not right for me and my apartment. We kept looking, all around, small dogs, large dogs, puppies, seniors. No one I was completely sold on. Then my dad had me come back in the room with Tia to see the dog in the cage under hers. He was a dirty messy scraggly guy with a funny bark. He had been taken from his last family because they kept him tied to a tree outside all the time with no shelter "because the kids had allergies," yet they had a Lab that lived inside. I have allergies too, and am allergic to Labs, and have never once had a problem with Benji. The Dog Warden decided to take him away from them a week before Christmas. We got him out and walked around with him for a while. In my head, my biggest criteria was a dog slightly under 20 pounds so if I ever had to fly with him, I wouldn't have to put him in the belly of the plane, I would be able to carry him on. Benji was a little bit bigger than that, but the more my dad played with him and petted him, he was convinced that Benji was the little man for me. I played with him and loved him some before making my final decision that Benji would be coming home with me that night. I filled out the papers December 28, 2004 and the rest is history :)

Now I don't want everyone going on thinking "Aww, what a sweet dog, what a nice story." On our way home from the shelter, I took my new muddy, matted dog to Pet Supplies Plus to pick out his new collar, leash, kennel, bowls, food, etc. We were in the toy aisle and I was squeaking and tossing around every type of toy trying in vain to gain his interest and get him to play. Nothing. No interest whatsoever. Enter: Great Dane at the other end of the aisle. Benji locked eyes with this new dog and took off at a gallop toward the dane! At first, we were all thinking, aww, they want to play! NO! Benji! Stop biting the Great Dane! Unwrap yourself from it's neck! Cease and desist! "Oh no! my perfect new dog is going to get killed!" Luckily for all involved, the fully grown dane had a very good sense of humor, and in my mind I can still see him patting Benji's head with his huge paw and saying "There, there little dog. I know, you're big. It's okay." When we got the two untangled, Benji trotted off like nothing had happened. We were still standing there horrified, and the dane's owner just laughed and said they were more worried about Benji than their dog, one chomp could have seriously injured him. We thanked them for their candor and quickly shuffled out of the store. I learned that night that Benji's a tough guy. I've never seen him back down when feeling threatened (even when it's by an 80 year old man with a cane) but he doesn't usually actually attack, just growls to let you know he's the boss. He's still stubborn and always right, and if he doesn't want to do something, good luck getting him to do it. But at home, he's the most adorable loving licking and sometimes playful little guy. As I type this, he's curled up in his pink poodle blanket (it used to be mine; he claimed it. same as he did my fleece robe.) on the couch. He LOVES soft blankets and rubs all over them before forming them into a perfect Benji-shaped nest.

In March, we moved into our house and out of the apartment that kept the Little Man so cramped up. Now he has plenty of space to run and play in, deer to chase, chippymunks and squirrels and turkeys to hunt, and grass to fertilize. The great news for me: he couldn't care less about birds!

This is Benji's Kingdom.

Until we put in our fence, we keep him on a 30ft tie-out which gives him lots of room to sniff and hunt for chippymunks, and a little hillside he can climb up on to see the neighbor's yard and watch for more critters. Then sometimes his tie-out chain gets stuck on the stumps of the multiflora rose bushes we took out in the spring and he gets the pitiful "Mommmeeeee? Please help me" look.

But most of the time, he just lays around and chills and enjoys the grass.

Last March, right after we moved in, our front porch was looking pretty bare.

"Mommee will probably be along shortly... I'll just keep being patient."

A Pileated Morning

2009-10-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready for work, I noticed something large fly across in front of my bedroom window and land in one of the cherry trees just out of sight. I quickly grabbed the camera and ran (then creeped slowly) into the living room to take pictures straight out the front window of this beautiful male Pileated Woodpecker! I don't think their novelty will wear off from me for a pretty long time. I know that I see them usually once a week or so, and hear them nearly every day, but there is something magnificent about this almost comically large bird with it's wild red punk hair style and facepaint and it's wild calls into the forest.

I will eat you from the right...

I will eat you from the left...

And now to eat some berries.

Time for preening!

Fluffy bunny

Then his bride flew in to ~~nag him~~ check on him.

You'll have to click this one to see them clearly, but he's on the bottom left, and she's on the top right, about 10-15 feet apart.

Daily Mutts

2009-10-18T05:33:00.000-07:00

Everything natural - every flower, tree and animal - has important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look, and listen. ~Eckhart Tolle

Sparky

2009-10-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

September 2007

My sister was on the quad of her college campus and saw some students gathering around something and watching intently. As she got closer, she noticed the baby bird they were teasing hopping around and looking very scared. She got a box and loaded him up and brought him home. A nervous ball of fluff peered up when she opened the lid for us. We knew it wasn't one of the usual suspects for our area (like a robin, sparrow, or blue jay), so she took it up to the Schrader Center at Oglebay Park to have it checked out. They said he was a baby cedar waxwing, and his normal diet should be fruit, mostly wild grapes. He definitely couldn't fly enough to release, and their usual bird rehabber was out of town, so she brought him home and put him in a large cage with some wild grapes she'd picked from the vines at the park.

We had blueberries and grapes out for him, he walked over a small blueberry and squatted down on it like he was incubating an egg! Low quality because the only camera I had with me was my cell phone.

Back view, you can see how short his wing feathers were and why he couldn't fly yet.

He took that big chunk out of the grape already.

My sister and her little perching friend.

Sitting on a pinecone trying to avoid eating offered the dogwood berry. He was successful.

This is his Christmas card photo.

Getting a little bigger, mouth still dirty from all the grapes eaten earlier.

Click this picture to make it bigger... check out the detail inside his mouth. Very neat.

Squaaaak! I want more grapes!

She kept him for a couple weeks, eventually needing a bigger cage so he could practice using his wings. He would practice flying from branch to branch, getting steadier and better aim with each passing day. When she thought he was big enough and could fly and feed on his own, she took him back up to see the wildlife rehab people, and they agreed. There were several flocks of Cedar Waxwings that frequented the wooded area behind the Schrader Center, so that's where she released him. She desperately wanted to band him to be able to pick him out if she saw him, but the banding person was out of town, and Sparky was too big to keep in captivity anymore. Some birds weren't meant to be caged.

"Some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And
when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does
rejoice."
~The Shawshank Redemption

Almost Paradise

2009-10-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

My family has been visiting Venice, Florida since before I was born. My grandparents bought a condo right on the beach which became our biannual vacation spot. When I was really little, there was a great blue heron who visited us when we were in town. We think he would notice the big mess of plastic beach toys and seashells on the porch, because Papa said he didn't visit as much when we weren't there. Chopped up hotdog, shrimp, turkey, and one interesting time, a pizza crust, were all on the menu when Freddie would show up. We were amazed at this animal who was at least as tall as we were, as there certainly wasn't anything like him on our porch in suburban West Virginia! Perhaps this is where my interest in birding was piqued. We'd sit on the porch or just inside the sliding glass door tossing small pieces of leftovers to him, playing a game to see how close we could make him come without scaring him away (or losing a finger!), and trying not to stir up too much of a ruckus which would make the seagulls and pigeons and starlings swarm the porch. Grandma isn't much for bird poop, and pooping is a seagull's main job.

Over the years, I'm certain there have been many different Freddies, and other species have come to share and leave memories burned into our minds with a gulf-coast sunset backdrop. These are some pictures from a trip in January 2008 with several of the species who have watched me grow up on that beach.

Bald Eagle resting on the airport radio tower by the beach

Brown Pelican... the COOLEST to watch when they're fishing from the sky... Kamakaze!

A pair of Osprey nesting in a tower over the state police barracks, right next to the Venice Rookery. http://www.veniceaudubon.org/rookery.html

A motley crew... (please correct me), but I'm pretty sure (based on my Sibley book, but if it's wrong I'm not blaming the book, just my identification skills!) that on the left is a Ruddy Turnstone, then a Snowy Egret, and I have yet to pin down the one on the right.

One of my favorite pictues I've ever taken; three Great Blue Herons nesting at the Venice Rookery. The bottom one has a boyfriend that flies to the shore in search of the perfect stick for their nest. He brings it back, she examines it and places it carefully in the perfect spot in the nest, if she is happy, then they make some baby herons. I have video proof, but it's pretty graphic! Not for young eyes :)

A single heron on the other side of the rookery's island.

This was my first Black Crowned Night Heron... I was completely stumped at the time because it was so dark, all I could see was eyes and the white breast against the dark background; but come home, add photoshop and lighten up those shadows and he jumped right out!

Here he is again cropped in a little closer.

This Great Egret visited every day we were there; not my best/sharpest photo of him, but definitely the coolest angle.

I like the composition and color of the sky in this one.

One of many beautiful sunsets we have been so lucky to see for so many years.

Small Sit

2009-10-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

Today was Bird Watcher's Digest's 15th annual "Big Sit," a tailgate party for birders. It's free to participate; pick a spot, and within a 17 foot diameter circle, count as many bird species as you can see or hear in 24 hours. I don't have that much patience (24 straight hours?) so I was playing with a new camera this morning and watched for a few hours and counted 15 species through the living room window, not counting the ones I couldn't identify for sure (a couple hawks and some crow/raven/blackbird types in flight). I don't think it's too bad for a newbie, and a nice way to spend a morning.

Song Sparrow
White breasted Nuthatch
Eastern Phoebe
Tufted Titmouse
Black Capped Chickadee
Red Bellied Woodpeckers
Northern Cardinal
Eastern Towhee
Blue Jay
Nashville Warbler
Mourning Dove
American Robin
White Throated Sparrow
Carolina Wren
Wild Turkey (a nice little family of 14!)

Mommy and Daddy

Migrating Nashville Warbler

Toe-Touch Tufted Titmouse

I think every color is in this picture.

Baby Birder

2009-10-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first post of the Baby Birder! I have chosen the name because I'm just beginning to bird. I end up spending as much time watching as I do looking up what I've just seen, but you've got to start somewhere! That being said, I am completely open to suggestions if you think I've identified something incorrectly, or have ideas of what it may be! I welcome the knowledge. I love photography, and chances are, if I don't have a picture of it, I'm not going to identify it correctly... consequently I have my camera with me at all times, and take way too many pictures. I'm currently shooting with a Nikon Coolpix S10, 6.1mp 10x optical zoom, but hopefully soon will be upgrading to a Nikon D80 DSLR (though I do borrow one now from time to time.) I love to go naturing in the woods (or adventuring as my dog Benji calls it) and we find lots of neat stuff adventuring. His favorite are the chippymunks and skwirlls and deers, I tend to go for the birds, moss, mushrooms, and trees. To each their own :)