Tech Support and I have lived in our current house for four years now. Every summer, we’ve watched (presumably) the same pair of loons swimming around on the lake out back, but we’ve never seen evidence of successful reproduction. We were starting to think that baby loons didn’t actually exist, and that adults sprung fully formed from their parent’s thoughts. Kind of like the Greek goddess Athena.
Then yesterday, an odd-looking, fuzzy brown bird paddled past our shore, and suddenly a parent loon popped back up to the surface right next to it.
Baby loons: no longer mythological.
In related news, author-friend Marie Powell has a new children’s book coming out this summer, on baby ostriches. For more info, check out her post!
What about you? Any baby bird sightings where you are?
Yes! We saw two quail and over a dozen little fuzzy fledglings running across a sidewalk and road yesterday. Marvelous.
Quail are so cute!
A baby nuthatch flew into our house on Saturday and scared the poo out of Neil. I ushered it (gently) into the garage with a broom, but lost it. We found it again the next morning and it made it back outside. Poor little thing.
Nuthatch drama! I hope it survived once it made it back outside.
How fun!!!
Oh, Lyndsey, I wish I had baby birds again. I’ve been plagued this week with two month old chickens that are overdue for the freezer. Yes, at TWO months.
I forgot that meat birds are bred these days for quick weight gain. They could have gone three weeks ago, but tht week, my grandchildren, who loved to handle them, visited. So, I put slaughter out of my mind. Then, I went out of town. Now they are way beyond what the periodic withdrawal of their food can accomplish. Yesterday, the first one died, probably of a heart attack, which happens when they go too long. How I’d love to find a source of meat birds that are not of this ilk. I’d love for them to come up to “maturity” slowly, at their own pace so that all twenty aren’t “overdue” at once. Sigh. I need a condo in the city.
Wow, Janet, I had no idea that chicken raising could be so complicated, but I can see why it would be. Chicks are incredibly cute, but it sounds like that wears off awfully quickly!