Baby Bird Season

It’s baby bird season at our house. We feed birds a lot and watch them with interest. Last year we watched a pair of Stellers Jays raise three little ones in the bushes right above my truck. And Nancy got some great photos of a violet green swallow relentlessly bringing insects to her nest full of babies.

This week we have been watching mother and father birds continue to feed fledglings after they have left the nest. Yesterday we watched a dark eyed junco hopping along our deck with a plump little one following her. She was picking up sunflower seeds that other birds had dropped, (they are ground feeders). She would pop them open with her beak and poke them into the waiting mouth of her offspring. The youngster didn’t try to pick up any seeds himself. He just hopped after mom with his little beak wide open.

Even more entertaining has been the feeding of the hairy woodpecker babies. These woodpeckers like it best when I hang home-made suet out for them, but I have been too busy to make any lately. So then they go after the big tube feeder that I fill with black oil sunflower seeds. The trouble is, the feeder is designed for smaller, lighter birds and if a squirrel or heavy bird tries to land on the perches, they fold down and drop him off.

The hairy woodpeckers have learned how to hang with two toes in the feeder slots and brace their stiff tail feathers against the bottom of the feeder to get to those sunflower seeds. And that way, they are among the messiest of eaters, spilling many seeds on the deck for the juncos.

But once the woodpecker has chosen a seed, the party is not over. Then he or she flies over to one of the 4x4 posts that hold up the roof over the deck and lands on the vertical surface just as they do on tree trunks in the forest. Over the years, they have created many little holes in the sides of these posts and the next trick is to poke the seed into one of those holes and strike it with the chisel-like beak the Lord has provided them with, thereby extracting the kernel.

Well this becomes especially entertaining the past two weeks as numerous mother and father woodpeckers have brought their fledglings to teach them where and how to find food. I watched one mother this week as she patiently tried to satisfy her loudly peeping little one.

First they both flew to the post that is closest to the feeder. The youngster announced their presence with a constant loud peeping that must mean, “Feed me, mommy! Feed me!” She soon flew to the feeder and hung upside down, scattering several seeds on the deck below before selecting one out of the feeder. She flew back to the post and the two of them maneuvered on the vertical surfaces until she could put the seed in his beak. But then he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. And before he figured out what to do with it, he managed to drop it.

Well, just like all the seeds that mom had dropped, that one would be for the juncos. Mom immediately flew back to the feeder and selected a new one and repeated the performance. The pair of them repeated this performance several times with the young bird always dropping the seed and peeping loudly all the while.

Finally the mother bird put the next seed in one of holes in the post and opened it herself. This time she put just the kernel in her baby’s beak instead of the whole seed, shell and all. That time he didn’t drop it but kept peeping for more. So she patiently returned to the feeder three or four more times and each time she opened the seed for her little one and fed him. Then they flew away together.

Isn’t that a lesson for us about our heavenly father? Sometimes he tries to fill our mouths with good things but we don’t know how to manage the gifts so they fall to our feet, hopefully to benefit some ground feeder. But the Lord won’t let us starve. After we demonstrate that we don’t know how to open the gift and use it, he opens it for us and sees that we are nourished. But eventually he expects that we, like the young bird, will learn how to handle the gift ourselves, in it’s original form. And sometimes the dropped seeds find good soil and grow up to provide beauty and eventually more seeds.