Baby Birds

When we moved onto our new property, we bought a 14' x 30' cabin to live in while we built our house. Now that we have moved into our house, we decided to sell the cabin to provide the capital to progress farther on other projects...like siding, a lawn, interior doors, etc.

Early on the morning that the new owners of the cabin came to move it, Keith found a beautiful bird's nest on top of the window air conditioner that needed to be removed. I was still in bed and groggy when he came in and showed me the nest with five little white eggs in it. He said something about showing it to the children and a that I could find our heat lamp. A heat lamp? Did he really say that?

Keith had gone to work by the time I got up. So I trudged up to our shed with thousands of miscellaneous things in it and actually found the heat lamp. I was pretty proud of myself. Joshua had decided that he needed to hold one of the eggs while I was in the shed (even though I had emphatically told both Laura and Joshua not to touch the eggs) and of course crushed it, so we were down to four eggs.

I set up the heat lamp over the nest in our garage with very mixed emotions. Sure it sounds wonderful to raise baby birds, and you get these nostalgic ideas of adult birds that will come and sit on your finger when you call because you bonded with them while they were small, etc., etc. It was one of those things...You have the eggs, so you don't feel like you can throw them out. You have to put them under heat. Once their under heat, you surely can't take them away from it. So I waited with a bit of apprehension.

A few days later, Keith comes in the bedroom early in the morning again and says with a grin, "Theyyyy've haaaaaatched!" Oh no. Now what? I never researched how to feed baby birds because I thought that maybe they wouldn't hatch at all. I panicked a bit. I ran out to the garage and was able to see the third egg hatch. It was pretty neat, but I can't say that newly hatched birds are cute.

The researcher in me took over and I ran to the computer and printed out 5 articles on raising baby birds...all with different feeding schedules, diet concotions, etc. Now, how do I pick the right diet? I had no idea what kind of birds these were. What ruled out was a modified version with ingredients that I had on hand. Blended dog food, hard boiled eggs and some vitamins. It did not smell pretty. Dilute to 90% water and here we go! Now feeding them with a children's liquid medicine syringe is no easy task, but the mother instinct in me took over and I fed those open-mouthed babies every 2-3 hours (not at night though).

Laura and Joshua were enthralled with them. Unfortunately the 4th egg never did hatch and the other three died within 3 days. I cried. Even though I knew that they died 90% of the time, it was still sad. I took it harder than Laura and Joshua. All I could tell them is that momma birds can take care of baby birds much better than me. God has it planned out like that.

I have my hands full with human babies!