Small Feathered Friends

[jacey]

I was woken up the other morning by a strange unrhythmical tapping. When I went to the bedroom window I spotted a small, rotund bluetit outside on the stone sill, pecking away at (I presume) insects on the mastic round the edge of the UPVC - or maybe on the UPVC itself.

And last week a strange fluttering sound in the living room proved to be a young starling that had fallen down the chimney and was flapping round in the ashes under the grate, trapped by the ash pan. It kept pushing its beak through the crack. So I opened the French windows, closed the internal door and pulled out the ash pan. The bird fluttered on to the inside of the fireguard and then spotted the opening and flew away - apparently none the worse for its adventure.

The old sash windows (painted solid) hadn't been opened for years when we moved into thew house in 1980. Catching a starling that's trying to flap its way through a window pane is a neat trick. Luckily they get so focused on what's on the other side of the glass that they completely fail to see the hulking great human creeping up behind them. You can usually get your hands round the body - or if desperate, can lower a lighweight teatowel over it, walk it through the house and let it out of the back door.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

We have a garden full of very bossy great, blue and long-tailed tits right now, all wanting sole access to the bird feeders. And a pigeon managed to fall down the chimney on Saturday, too, which was messy (soot everywhere) and very cat-intriguing. The pigeon was fine, however.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

After I had all the old rotting windows replaced, Mac went round and very thoroughly dug out all the mastic he could reach, and ate it.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Pets can be so... inappropriate...

Diezel eats any paper he can get hold of. He especially likes to steal small bits of paper from my desk (being well capable of reaching things now he's reached his full height). Usually he goes for the paper strips from the back of a peel-and-stick envelope, but last week he managed to snaffle a ten pound note. I did manage to stop him before he chewed it too badly.

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

Last week I found a fledgling flapping on the pavement I was walking along. Probably a starling or similar and I stuck it in a nearby garden under rose bushes. Yes, it probably still died, but at least it would fertilise the roses! ;) My friend who was with me is a little more sympathetic, but has a bird phobia.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I guess it's just silly-season for teenage birds and some of them survive and some don't.

We got married in August (1971) and on taking up residence in our new (to us) house found a baby house martin in our small walled back garden, with mum flapping round encouraging it to fly, but to no avail. It struggled on for three days and mum stayed around. We daren't intervene because we figured she had a better chance than we did, but we got terribly emotionally tied up with Twit-bird, as we called it. (Sigh.) It died, of course. If we'd tried to help it would probably have died of fright. Sometimes you just can't win.