In the birding calendar, late June is a great time to sit back, relax and watch some chicks. The month of May means urgent, frenetic birding to catch migrants before they disappear, then, in just a few weeks there will already be new southbound shorebirds migrants to seek. But right now is the perfect time to sit on the deck with that first cup of coffee, and watch those most hapless, naïve, and adorable of creatures, baby birds.
In my yard, nesting success has been dismal this year, with the titmice and Great-crested Flycatchers so far failing on every nesting attempt in my various boxes – their eggs have mainly gone to feed predators, probably some combination of chipmunks and raccoons. Most people don’t know that fuzzy, seemingly innocent Disney animals get a bit bloodthirsty now and again, but squirrels, chipmunks, and even deer will eat eggs and baby birds. If you still refuse to believe Bambi is a badass, you should google last week’s viral video of a deer eating a snake like a strand of spaghetti.
But back to the phoebes, who nest annually two houses down on my neighbor’s shed. They had better luck than the titmice and flycatchers, finally fledging their own chicks instead of the usual Brown-headed Cowbird chicks – the duplicitous cowbirds only lay eggs in the nests of other birds in hopes of tricking them into raising their young. I had been hearing the adult phoebes singing in my yard for a few days, but first noticed the recently fledged phoebe chicks on Father’s Day, when I was hanging out with my daughter Phoebe. Being an incurable, misty-eyed Irish sentimentalist, I teared up a bit thinking back to my own baby Phoebe. She’s only three – imagine how misty-eyed I’ll be about her babyhood when she’s 18.
These baby phoebes ticked all the boxes that give baby birds their pathos and irresistibility – fuzzy and a bit disheveled looking, stubby in all directions, unsteady, and generally clueless. I watched one as it perched under the oak canopy in my yard, waiting to be fed – it pumped its short little tail just like mom and dad, then leaned over to chew aimlessly on a leaf in hopes that maybe an insect will accidentally end up in its mouth. It’s amazing how much these babies need to learn in the couple of weeks before the parents stop feeding them.
Yesterday I started hearing recently fledged Baltimore Orioles up the street, and I’ve been hearing them for a while at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary. Baby orioles are so loud that I will never understand how any of them survive the nestling stage – they chatter, loudly and constantly, both in and out of the nest, as if telegraphing their location to every hungry hawk, crow and Blue Jay within a mile. Somehow, most nests seem to fledge their noisy, but cute, contents into the world.
Sometimes even one-year old birds aren’t grown up yet. Several second-year Broad-winged Hawks have been soaring around over my yard for the last week, calling their high pitched calls, and trying to figure out how to be a grown-up. These are identifiable as young from a good distance as they are typically missing wing and tail feathers. Most hawks don’t breed as one-year-olds, doing something like a bird version of a gap year. These young Broad-wings came all the way back from some cloud forest in Peru for no other reason but to wander around “finding themselves” and annoying the breeding adults throughout their first summer.
The point of all this is that we should enjoy all these babies while we can. Take it from me, an experienced parent – because before you know it, they’ll be three years old…
