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Daily Bucket: Friday Sequence, What story does this young bird have to tell? [1]
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Date: 2022-07-29
Do you recognize the bird in the above photo? It is very young but it has quite a story to tell.
A Northern Flicker has made a residence in the telephone pole next to our house the last several years.
It spent lots of time preening. Is it a red-shafted or an intergrade? I think intergrade.
We watched as it made many trips to the nest cavity, constantly it seemed, pecking away to make it bigger.
Finally the day came when we heard some little noises of a chick hungry for a meal.
Surprise. There were two chicks waiting for food, not just one.
One chick waited while the other made its pitch to be first.
Is this far enough to get the food in?
Not by far. Just like a hummingbird feeding its young, this flicker stuck its beak way down the chick’s throat.
Here’s a closer look. The chick even turned sideways to get a better angle.
The second chick got fed later way down in the nest.
One morning a neighbor came to report a chick on the ground! Oh, no! What to do?
It hopped/fluttered low onto the trunk cherry tree (famous by being in another earlier Bucket) and climbed up to the first set of branches. We thought it would be safer there than on the ground. We were wrong. An hour later we heard kids playing outside. Oh, no. I bet they are climbing the tree. I rushed out, and sure enough, the kids had climbed the tree and the flicker chick had fluttered down to the street and crossed it to the other side (why did the flicker cross the road? Oh — that’s a joke about a chicken. Back to the flicker story.)
I gently captured it in a paper bag and put it back up in the tree when the kids were gone.
But it flew back down the other side.
The chick finally settled back on to a different tree up on our yard in about an hour when we checked. Can you see it on the side of the tree just above the pile of chips?
But on and off it had to rest on the bark.
The next morning we heard a chick and an adult responding. The second chick was still in the nest cavity for one day, before it fledged. Now we are not sure what happened to our little ‘fallen too early’ bird.
But we are hoping it is one of the ones making noise at 5 am, calling to be fed.
What stories do you have about finding animals and trying to decide what to do to help them, or maybe just leave them alone? I am looking forward to finding out your stories and what’s happening in your part of the world.
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