I think I need to add a category for bird related entries – they can’t be easily classified according to my current categories!

A couple of days ago we sold four of the eight ducklings, and yesterday we sold the three ducks that we incubated (they were 7.5 weeks old). All of the birds went to excellent homes; I enjoyed meeting and chatting with the buyers at length.
As I said to one of them, when I got started a couple of years ago canning and was acquiring canning supplies, I remember telling dh that people who can are the nicest people. Well, yesterday I was saying, poultry people are the nicest people!

So our yard is much quieter and emptier now that seven ducks have gone to new homes, which is nice. But about two hours after the ducks were sold, a new addition was dropped into our laps. Or to be more accurate, dropped onto my bathroom floor!

Here’s what happened. Yesterday dd13 suddenly said to me in the middle of the day, “I think I hear a cheeping coming from the vent in the bathroom.” She listened again and thought she heard something again, and asked if she could open the vent cover. I couldn’t imagine how it was possible to have a bird inside a wall but said, sure.

She opened it and found a shoe (which must have been there a long time since it wasn’t one of ours), a key, and something else. And there was no more noise. So the kids were laughing to each other at how they thought they heard a bird but it was really a pile of junk. But then a little while later, they heard cheeping again. So they stuck the digital camera up into the hole in the wall, and took a video, since they couldn’t see anything (the vent opening is right next to the ceiling and pitch black inside). They loaded it onto the computer so they could see if there was anything there, and sure enough, a bird was flitting around inside the wall! Yikes.

They asked me what we should do and I told them we’d have to wait and see – my standard stalling tactic when I don’t want to deal with something right away. After a while we decided to leave the vent cover off, open the bathroom door, and open all the windows on the main floor so when it flew out, it could quickly find an exit.

I’m really not a bird person – I’m uncomfortable with the sudden fluttery movements and sharp beaks. Once I was at a homeschool nature class on birds with the kids, and the person leading it released a starling that flew across the room. The other mothers moved slightly, while without thinking I made a very noticeable (and undignified) duck- no other mother moved more than slightly – the naturalist giving the workshop was laughing at my obvious discomfort to this small bird flying across the room in my direction. Well, that’s how I am. I find birds unnerving because they’re unpredictable. So the idea of a bird flying around my house wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but neither was a bird dying inside my wall something I wanted to have happen.

Hours went by, and the cheeping was quite loud but the bird couldn’t seem to find it’s way out. I went to take a very late afternoon nap, and when I woke up was greeted with the news that the bird came out. Phew, I thought, I’m glad it left the house when I was asleep. But my relief was premature- it didn’t leave the house. In fact, it was sitting on top of my dehydrator in the kitchen wrapped up in a towel and cheeping loudly. It was a tiny baby bird.

It seems that it finally fell out of the vent opening onto the bathroom floor, which is where ds8 found it. (Seriously, it’s a good thing it missed the toilet, which was just a couple of inches away, or it would have drowned.) This baby bird is very lucky he ended up in our home, since he’s being very well-treated. 🙂 Dd9 is very, very good with animals, so she’s been feeding him tiny ants and potato bugs that she searched for in the garden, duck pellets mashed up with water, and giving him lots of water so he doesn’t dehydrate. This morning the kids discovered that it loved cornmeal mashed with water – they drop it into his mouth and he gobbles it down. He’s so tiny that he easily fits into her hand – when she closes her hand he’s totally inside and it hardly looks like anything is there!

Are you wondering how a bird could be inside the walls of your house? Well, I certainly was! The kids said that a nest had been laid somewhere in the gutter near the roof, and there was a very small gap between there and where the vent for the bathroom exits. It apparently was just large enough for this tiny baby bird to stumble into.

We’ll have to research what to do with him, but it looks like a baby sparrow is our newest pet. My current understanding is that once a person touches a baby bird, the mother won’t take care of it anymore, and he would die very soon if he were released back outside now. I hope I’ll be able to borrow a cage to keep him until we decide what to do with him long term. We’re getting lots of hands on science recently without even having to look for it!

His name is Yona Matza. Dh suggested the name based on a famous Shabbos song called Yona Matza, ‘the dove found’. The song is about how the dove that was sent out of Noah’s ark found rest on the Sabbath. This little bird found rest in our house right before Shabbos, so it seems like a fitting name. 🙂

Avivah