FreeLists / tn-bird / [tn-bird] Re: To a Phoebe Dying Young: A Cautionary Tale

[RubyThroat@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/3/02 4:00:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time, EGLEAVES@xxxxxxx 
writes:


> 
> I don't know what it is about phoebes that endears them to us.  Perhaps 
> it's 
> their quiet grace as flycatchers; perhaps it's their approachability; 
> perhaps 
> it's their attentiveness to their young and their nests.
> 
> At least so I thought until Bob Sargent set me straight on the latter 
> point.  
> In any case, we have enjoyed watching a pair of phoebes raise two broods on 
> our back porch this summer, five in the first litter, four in the second.  
> After the first brood, I took down the nest and cleaned around it, only to 
> watch them return in a few days and construct a new nest on the same beam 
> above a light on our covered back porch.
> 
> As for the baby bird out of the nest to which Bob responded so 
> informatively, 
> a few minutes after I sent the message last night I noted that it had made 
> its way across the porch to the very edge, with a ten-foot fall to concrete 
> below.  It appeared to be ready to leap when I decided to grab it, as 
> gently 
> as I could--too gently, it seems, for he wriggled loose and fell to his 
> death 
> on the rocks below.
> 
> When I checked on their offspring, the parent birds scolded me mercilessly 
> and deservedly, making me feel even worse than I did about the matter.  
> Today, they've returned to their duties with the remaining chicks and life 
> goes on.  Minus one.
> 
> 

Ed and TnBirders
I once had a BANDED pair build 7 nests under a boat shed on a lake near my 
home.  The female layed a total of 11 eggs in three nests.  She hatched 5 
young from one of the nests.  All the babies fledged, jumping into the water. 
 All were retrieved by fisherman using a dip net and were placed in the 
bottom of a boat where the parents fed them for two days.  According to the 
attendant at the marina, all flew with their parents into the nearby woods 
and apparently were off and running.  

Without the dip-net-rescue, it appears all would have wound up as turtle food.

I admire them for their ability to make a living under severe winter 
conditions.  One of my favorite observations is of an apparent mated pair 
sitting on my tiny frozen pond in the pasture and gleaning insect from the 
lake debris as it thawed in the afternoon sunlight.  They seemed content and 
right at home, pumping that long tail and calling to each other when 
separated by more than 100 feet or so.  When it appeared that the bitter cold 
of 1989 would finally take their lives, they shifted over to eating sumac, 
privet and dried, frozen poke berries.  They are tough as nails!

I may not understand all I know about Phoebes!

Bless all
Bob Sargent  


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