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Day one, June 1st, 2016:
The “Say’s Phoebe” nest on my front porch (my desert vacation cabin, in Canebrake Canyon, in the California Sonoran Desert) had the little bird leave the nest before it was big enough to fly. I called Karyn (Canebrake’s foremost bird expert) and she came over and we put the little guy back in the nest twice but it wouldn’t stay and fell to the cement porch both times.
A “Say’s Phoebe” nests there every year and it often ends badly, sometimes with a raid by a raven or hawk, so this year I’m going to block off the area with screening to prevent further nesting there. I will put a nesting box designed for Say’s Phoebes on a nearby wall to replace the not-so-good porch location.
Day three:
Today it is hunkered down on the porch concrete, the mother is still around and feeding it. In the two days since I first saw it the wings are larger and more pronounced now. Just possibly it will survive and be able to fly soon. I don’t like to be outside and hear the mother constantly calling her baby.
Day four:
The baby bird was hunkered down in a cavity under one of my walkways border rocks this morning. I couldn’t have found it but for seeing the mother come to feed it. It seems to have a very good instinct about hiding and blending in to surroundings to avoid a predator.
This afternoon it had moved to the shade under my biggest ironwood tree. I saw it pecking at the base of one of my big cactus so maybe it is starting to look for food on its own. There could have been a bug there on the cactus. Because of the very hot afternoon I turned on the sprinklers, one of which sprays under the ironwood. This gave the “little guy” (my name for it) the choice of shade without water spray or shade with water spray. After a while staying outside the spray, it moved back to the cactus where there was spray on one side. It carved out a hollow in the leaves and sand there and spent the rest of the afternoon. I saw it preening itself and pecking around some. If it wanted to drink water it could get drops forming on the cactus spines nearby. When it traveled it used its wings to assist moving over the ground.
All afternoon there was no sign of the mother to feed it but then there was no sign of any birds. This afternoon Canebrake became a “no fly zone” with a high of 109. There were no birds in the sky, no birds in the trees, no birds in the bushes and no birds could be heard singing. They must have all been hunkered down somewhere in the unseasonable heat. After sunset I saw the mother in the front yard so I presume the bambino was getting dinner.
The “little guy” is an amazing survivor! I didn’t give it much of a chance of making it through Wednesday (day one) night. Now here it is Saturday night and this afternoon it looked perky, it was flapping to assist travel, poking around the ground, scuffing around in the dirt, and for all intents a miniature adult Say’s Phoebe. If it can grow bigger and stronger over the next few days it will reach the point where the wing flapping lifts it off the ground and it flies a few feet. Its little brain will say: “Hey, check that out”! “I want more of that”! And off we go into the wild blue yonder.
Here’s to the never give up, against terrible odds, attitude of one little bird!
Day five:
A photo I took of “Little Guy” this morning (Sunday June 5th). The baby bird was hunkered down by the creosote bush outside my back door, quite a distance from here it was yesterday. Both mom and dad birds were tending to it this morning.
The forecast is for a little cooler today but still a “scorcher” at 107. Right now, at 9:55am it is 99. It has been very windy all morning.
Continuing now, in the afternoon, from this morning’s update on “Little Guy”. He or she moved from the east side door area of my cabin to the west side door area and hunkered down for most of the day, sheltering from sun and wind next to the trunk of my big desert willow. During the heat of the mid-afternoon there was no visit from mom or dad. Late in the afternoon Little Guy moved out into a more open spot, something it had not done before and mom and dad began tending to it. I saw a raven land on the closest power pole and I don’t know if it had spotted Little Guy, but not wanting to take any chances I chased the raven away and kept watch while my dinner was cooking in the microwave.
When my dinner was ready I went out on the west porch to eat. To my surprise, and concern, I saw Little Guy was out on the big cement slab in my driveway, fully exposed, and standing out in sharp contrast to the light concrete.
Then I noticed the mom sitting low in a bush on the other side of the driveway calling to her baby. Little Guy started toward her in little flapping wing hops along the ground. I was hoping it would actually fly, of course, but it just used its wings to assist travelling over the ground and going over rocks. But it was popping off the ground by an inch or two with each flap and step. It tried to flap and climb its way over one of the rocks lining my driveway and about ¾ of the way up it tumbled back down. So, it wisely moved over to the space between rocks and went through there.
Every time it got close to mom she would move farther away and keep calling. I think she wanted to get it away from my house and into the desert. She may have been concerned because it had moved into such an exposed place. My yard was good protection for Little Guy’s early exit from the nest but every time mom or dad would see me moving they would fly away, so I think they wanted to be away from human habitation now.
As the sun set behind the Tierra Blanca Mountains I watched Little Guy travel away in little hops across the desert until he or she disappeared among the distant cactus and creosote bushes in the general direction of south west. I could still hear the mom calling it to come farther. That dusty desert wind got into my eyes and made them all misty watching this little bird disappear as I said out loud: “Goodbye Little Guy, live long and do well”.
I am so glad that I got to see it leave my yard so that I wouldn’t wonder what happened to it come morning, when it is nowhere around the house. I hope it had a good night.
Later this summer, when I see a Say’s Phoebe flying through my yard, I will have no way to know if it is Little Guy but I will sure pretend that it is and do as I’ve done for the past several days, when I would find it hunkered down somewhere in my yard, and say; “hi Little Guy”.
Day six:
This morning I promised myself that I was going to resist looking for Little Guy. That personal resolve lasted until about 10am. I had been seeing the parents flitting about and sometimes they would land in certain areas, so I thought if I observe them I should be able to find Little Guy hunkered down under a bush.
Well, this didn’t work and I couldn’t find Little Guy anywhere. I also noticed that the parents frequently changed the locations of their interest. Then about 11:30am I saw them fly behind my garage several times. As I approached the back corner of the garage the papa bird took off from ground level so I thought aha, the baby bird is hunkered down in one of the small cavities along the foundation. I looked carefully at all of those places and didn’t see any sign of the baby. Although I have surely learned over the past six days how well it can become invisible.
After I walked away I saw the dad fly back to that same back corner and land. I knew that if I just walked back to that corner it would fly away before I got to within a couple of feet of the corner. So I decided I would sneak around the other side of the garage and peek around the other back corner to see where the papa bird was and therefore locate the Little Guy. When I peeked around the corner I was disappointed to see that the papa bird had already flown away.
So, I began to slowly move out to go around the corner, hoping to see Little Guy hunkered down next to the foundation. Then a tiny, scraggly, gawky, little bird took to the air and disappeared around the other side of the building. The wind was strong and the bird was almost instantly boosted to about eight feet high and turned quickly downwind so I only got to see it for an instant. I said: “Hi Little Guy, goodbye again little Guy” and the dusty wind got to my eyes again.
I have no idea where it was hiding but it had to have been Little Guy judging by its size, unkempt appearance, and the attention it had been getting from the parent couple. I wondered; is it possible to go from flapping wings and using legs to just hop across the ground, to flight eighteen hours later? The strong, gusty, wind certainly gave it a boost when it launched into the air. I’m thinking now that it was frequently changing ground locations this morning by flying low and I wasn’t looking for it in the air. Another indicator, that it was Little Guy, was the parents leaving the vicinity after it flew away. I didn’t see them the rest of the day.
All afternoon I was hoping it would return to my yard and I could get a longer look at it but I didn’t see it again. If I don’t see it again before I leave Canebrake for home, it will be the same size as the other Say’s Phoebes by the time I get back here.
Day seven, epilog:
I was in the same general area where Little Guy had flown yesterday and I heard some chirping sounds and a bird that looked like Little Guy flew from a perch in a creosote bush. I began to piece together in my mind as to why I had been unsuccessful in spotting it the day before, until that one flight from behind the garage.
Little Guy’s calls had been like the parent’s calls but would often break up at the end reminding me of a pubescent boy whose voice was changing. When I was looking for it on the morning of day six, expecting to find it hunkered down next to a bush, I would hear that call and head toward the sound, but as I would get close it would suddenly move farther away but I wouldn’t see any bird. It was as if the sound was moving all by itself. In retrospect, I now think that while I was searching the ground, Little Guy was perching in the bushes and then flying low to another bush, as I got close. Because of the low flight and small size of the bird, I wasn’t seeing it as it changed locations ahead of me.
One tough little guy, now making its life in the desert.
Frank Colver
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