An Unusual Visitor

Things felt kind of quiet. Yes, a Sparrow came to bathe. But mostly I sat watching an empty puddle.

Just as I was deciding whether to check my email or start an online game of scrabble, a woman with two shopping bags walked deliberately up to the fence next to the water. She reached into the first shopping bag, opened the cover of a large plastic container and suddenly the empty puddle was fluttering with birds. Confused and incredulous, I got up to stand next to her; she opened a second container more birds flew out.  Who was the young red head? To my relief, she was not a disenchanted magician, she was a bird rehabilitator who had just released seven young Starlings.

And that is how I learned a thing or two about bird rescuing. Mostly in the spring she finds or is given baby birds who have fallen from the nest.  She raises them till they can survive on their own and then chooses a place like the puddle where they’ll find food, water and shelter in the surrounding trees.  She can only work with invasive (non-native) birds like starlings and very common birds like pigeons not having a license to work with migratory birds

I will leave you with a video of one of these juvenile starling bathing and an adult starling who flies in.