FRIDAY FEEDING FRENZY

Our Astrid was abandoned as a kitten. After being bottle fed for a couple of weeks, she was placed with Lisbeth’s mom, Tuxie, who graciously accepted Astrid has part of her litter. We all know about this type of surrogacy, and we’ve all read about cross-species mothering.

That birds will feed another’s offspring, however, was news to me. We have both a robin’s nest and a house finch’s nest in our carport. Not so long ago, baby birds appeared in each nest, and we have watched both the robins and the finches feed their broods. Until yesterday, that is, when mommy robin started feeding both sets of babies.

Mother robin feeding her three babies.

Robin feeding her three babies.

Mother robin feeding finch babies.

Robin feeds house finch baby birds.

We continue to see the finch parents at our feeder, but they seem to have abandoned their babies.

And in other birdy news: Yesterday Mauricio brought me the gift of a baby bird. After I retrieved it from the kitchen floor (expecting it to be dead), inspected it and determined that it had no injuries, Tom called the local wildlife rescue.

They told us to put the infant bird under a bush near the two nests as, at the time, we thought it was one of the baby finches. They explained that it’s mother was probably teaching it how to find food and that the baby would call to it’s mother to let her know where to find it. They said to leave  it for about an hour to see if the mother bird came to retrieve it. Though all of our kitties were in the house or on their screened deck, we told the rescue organization that cats live in the neighborhood. We were advised to watch the bird, which I did while sitting on the front porch and writing comments on my favorite blogs. I don’t think it ever called out, and so there it sat an hour later.

At that point the plan was to take it to a nearby wild bird sanctuary. We noticed, however, lots of bird activity in our side yard. So instead of the sanctuary, Tom placed the itty-bitty birdy under a bush in that vicinity. An hour later, the bird was no longer there. We pray it was found by its mommy. We know none of our kitties found it!