flycatchers
arrived at my mom’s place in west virginia yesterday. tom showed us the nest of the great crested flycatchers in the wooden birdhouse box on a tree just off the side portch. four little babies tweeting and a mother darting in and out of the trees in search of tasty insects for them.
when we came home from dinner, we saw one little guy leaning out of the hole and were there to see him flutter and fall to the ground about fifteen feet below the birdhouse. then we noticed a second one down there.
after going back and forth on what to do and poking about on the internets (are they nestlings or fledglings? they have some feathers, but really just barely? should we put them back in the nest, leave them, or make another nest closer to the ground? etc) we followed the advice of one bird site and made a mini-nest out of a margarine tub and we nailed it to the tree about five feet off the ground. we put the two little nest/fledgelings in there and they tweeted for a little while and then went to sleep.
we wondered if we’d done the right thing, and this morning we found out the answer: definitely not. the two little birds in the margarine tub? gone. the two remaining babies in the birdhouse? gone. the nesting materials? everywhere. apparently a crow or an owl or something else found them in the night. now the home is nothing but an empty hole.
was it because the margarine tub was white and obvious? did this then alert the predator to the birdhouse above? would the owl have found them on the ground under the tree? did they tweet to alert the predator? in the immortal words of mike lafontaine, wha’ happened?
should we have put the birds back in the birdhouse? left them on the ground? the internet did not have solid answers and so we failed. we doomed four infant birdies to their distruction and we doomed a mama and a papa great crested flycatcher to tweet a sadder tweet today. you can hear it in their song, which is softer this morning. it’s a lament. a wail. a damning call to shame.
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