Baby Birds

Baby Birds, a photo by GreyCatsidhe on Flickr.

I’ll post about my adventures at Wellspring (or Mudspring) another time, but I wanted to share an experience I had tonight.

After a long day of work, classes, grocery shopping, and suffering with a I came home and went out to water my plants. The faucet is in the back of the apartment. On my way there, I saw two strange shapes in the grass. At first I thought they were toads but I quickly realized that they were baby birds. I bent down and tapped one with a blade of grass. It moved. So did the other. They started to shiver. They had fallen from their nest in the roof two stories above.

I remembered the pamphlet I had about what to do when you find orphaned or injured wildlife. A local wildlife rehabilitator named Sue-Ryn Burns distributes them when she sells incense and other goodies at Pagan-friendly events. I called her up and followed her advice – put them in a small box (well, first I put them in one of my crocheted hanging baskets to simulate a nest) with some dried grass and pine needles, put a bottle of warm water near them, and we met up with her husband halfway between my home and hers on Wellesley Island.

Their bright yellow beaks clued me in that they were probably starlings. I mentioned that to her on the phone and asked if she would still take an invasive species. She said she would and that they’re here for a reason; that she can’t turn any creature away. Invasive species are a touchy issue for animal lovers. Preventative measures are important, but these are just babies… Human beings are arguably the most invasive species on the planet. That doesn’t mean human babies should be killed, does it?

As soon as we passed them to Mr. Burns, they were fed a special mixture of nom noms. It’s so wonderful to know there are people willing to sacrifice so much time for the sake of other creatures.

Good luck little starlings!