Last week, during our last week of summer together, Mikey came running in from outside and said he caught a hummingbird. The Mister and I looked at each other and winced. It’s pretty hard to catch a hummingbird, so whatever Mikey “caught” was probably dead and hopefully not carrying a mutant virus.
He caught a hummingbird.
Actually, he caught (by covering it with one of his small garden pails) a young hummingbird, one that knows it should fly but hasn’t yet mastered the mechanics of it all. She was flopping around on the ground trying to make her wings work to no avail, so we scooped her up and made her a home in an empty box stocked with plush, wall-to-wall carpeting (a dish towel), a roman bath (jar lid), a stocked refrigerator (hummingbird feeder), and to eat, gourmet take-out (agapanthus–something Mikey was sure she would love).
And then I had to figure out what to do with her. It was early evening, so the vet was out of the question. We couldn’t afford to take her to the small animal emergency room, and besides, I wasn’t sure they handled birds. I called animal control, but they were closed. There was an option to press “1” if it was an emergency. I looked at the boys, eyes wide with expectation.
And I looked at the bird and she looked at me and tried to fly away.
She tried hard, but didn’t go very far.
So I pressed “1” and explained to the after-hours operator that, while this was not an emergency on par with finding a wild bear in your kitchen, my boys and this hummingbird seemed to think the events going down in our backyard were critical. She laughed and promised to send an officer over. An officer! At this point, I was a little embarrassed.
The officer called later that night, around 8:00pm, and asked if she could stop by in the morning. She was driving a shot dog to the emergency room and didn’t think she would get out until very late. Well, sure. I told her where she could find the hummingbird since we would be gone around the time she was coming over. When we came back, the hummingbird, who survived the night just fine, was gone.
On Tuesday the boys were playing outside when another hummingbird started darting around the yard. They are positive it was their hummingbird, coming back to say thanks.
That is so sweet! What a great thing for your children to experience.
When we were little, a nest of baby woodpeckers fell out of a tree, the mama bird was nowhere to be found and my dad fed them until they were old enough to fly away by themselves. Every single time we heard a woodpecker we thought it was them. It’s one of my very favorite memories of childhood.
I just love your narrative writing style. Never fails to make me smile.
Aww, now you’ve got me crying. Again.
We have a similiar story starring a mouse.
Your writing style never fails to put a smile on my face.
I had a similar situation with a opossum. :)
hummingbirds, bird baths and emergency phones calls,
Ms. Megan
xo
This is a wonderful story! So glad that she survived. She probably was either slightly injured or just learning to fly.
On a related note, did you know that if you have to care for a baby bird that is injured, you can feed it canned dog food, if you don’t have baby bird formula? just drop pieces of it into their mouths.
I had no idea about the dog food! I googled for an embarrassing amount of time on how to care for injured hummingbirds, but never thought to research birds in general. That’s the sort of fact that will be forever burned in my brain.
This is really cool. How neat for your boys to get to see a usually too-quick bird up so close! I saw a hummingbird on my walk home from work the other night and I had to stop in my track to watch it dart around a flowering bush. So interesting! Glad that she was okay in the end!
Time for me to quit lurking and let you know how much I enjoy your blog. You are an unusual woman – made some great choices – and I wish you were my Mommy (but I’m 64). Smilin’
I’m smilin’, too. Thanks for the kind words. :)
Oh, oh, we just saw an amazing Nature episode on hummingbirds!
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/hummingbirds-magic-in-the-air/introduction/5424/
You can watch the full episode online, thay will LOVE it!
And yes, that was her saying thanks : )
That has a better ending than the story of when I was little and found a bird. I put it in a shoebox and slathered its head with peanut butter because I heard once that birds need protein. When my mom found me I was cuddling my stiff new (very dead) peanut butter’ed pet.
Hah!
Yay! A wonderful story. Did the bird receive a name from the kids?
I think I’ll have to tell the story of Pogo the Possum in a future blog.
What a sweet, sweet story. :) And, as always, you have such a way with words…Love the bear in the kitchen comparison!!! ha ha!
This made me cry. As does everything these days.
Well that was just the sweetest story ever. It made me a little teary-eyed–thankfully, no one will ever know … oh wait …
This was a wonderful story and so glad you and your boys got to experience it. I’m an animal rehabber and everyone at work brings me baby birds, broken birds, kittens, puppies, piglets, etc. When it comes to baby birds who are out of the nest, but just a little to young to fly, if there are no cats around, Mama bird is close and will feed and care for baby until he or she can fly. Countless times, folks bring me these babies, I ask where they found them, return baby to the spot, and we wait about 30 seconds, and I say, “Hey, there’s Mom now.”
It is also a myth that once you have touched the baby, Mom will have nothing to do with he or she. I mean honestly, if someone else touched your boys, how would that make any difference in your mothering instincts? Mama birds know their babies anywhere.
I had do idea! How fascinating. So, even though she/he was flopping around on the ground we should have left him? I’m still not sure if the bird was too young or injured.
Unfortunately, our neighborhood is riddled with cats and we have two dogs. I don’t think I could have slept a wink knowing that poor baby was lying out in the dirt on a silver platter!
Hi Jules,
With cats and dogs around, you did the perfect thing. What I wrote above only works if the baby is safe from predators on the ground. It’s often a tough call to make. You did the very best possible thing.