Birds and Nature

After I moved the young nestling out of immediate harms way in the road, it occurred to me that this little bird would not survive the night on the ground in this area which is a rural area and adjacent to the Arkansas River. Besides farm cats in the area there are racoons, coyotes and other wildlife that were likely to find this quite helpless bird that could barely ambulate and was nowhere near ready to fly (if the mother laid the egg that became this nestling on the date I saw her on the nest, this bird could be as young as 6 days old, though I suspect from it's plumage it is more likely between 8-10 days old; but these birds don't leave the nest until 13-19 days of age) So I jury-rigged a replacement 'nest' to hopefully hold this little bird for a few days until hopefully it is able to fly to a branch where it has some safety. I found an old 3 tier wire hanging basket that my friend was willing to donate to the cause. Though it displayed an open beak as menacingl...

On June 27th I posted about a pair of Western Kingbirds that had it's first nest blown off it's moorings on a utility pole build another nest on the top of an old oriole nest. This unusual nest was directly above the entry road at my friend's and where I walk almost every evening with my dogs so I got to watch them frequently. The longer the female brooded on this oddly shaped nest, the more she pushed the nest materials into a kind of elongated shallow trench that was deeper at one end. This causes the nest to point slightly downhill on the other end, a fact that likely relates to what comes next. When I walked this evening I saw the tail of only one of the three nestlings sticking over the edge of the nest. As I looked for signs of the other nestlings I heard my younger dog, Chase, investigating something several feet away--it was a nestling! I yelled at my dog to 'leave' and it did (probably because it recently got into a lot of trouble for not going after a...