I'm home today, caring for the second bird in as many days. My first died after its first night here. It was a finch or sparrow that had fallen from its nest and probably suffered a head injury. My second is a healthy Carolina Wren whose backstory I don't know. I would guess that it is about 3 or 4 days old. Yesterday, I spent every 10 min of my time at Wildcare carefully prying open its mouth to be able to feed it. After 6 hours of this, he gaped for the first time. Within 45 min of that first gaping she was safely tucked in away in our guest bedroom. Carolina Wrens are known as "high-stress" animals in the world of wildlife rehabilitation. They require quite, dark, warm places to grow up and therefore do not fare well in a captive space full of noise and light. A group of 5 Carolina Wrens were cared for at the home of another volunteer recently and now the 3 that survived their early development stage are at the center, oddly enough, fully adjusted and doing well. I'm hoping that soon the little guy that is here will be able to join her brethren.
He is currently on a 20 minute feeding schedule which is a lot easier than the 10 minute one from yesterday. It doesn't allow me to leave the house, but I have no need to go anywhere. It is still unseasonably cool (61°), so there is a lot of activity at the bird feeders. I've counted 12 house finches at the feeders at one time, not to mention the cardinals, chickadees, tufted titmice, chipping sparrows, downy woodpeckers, mourning doves and nuthatches. This morning when it was a whopping 48°, the hummingbirds looked particularly put out by the autumn temps. They were all puffed out, making them look a lot less like the sleek bullets they normally do. They have been going through the nectar like crazy. I find myself making 4 cups every few days in order to keep up with the demand.
I've been subscribing to all sorts of bird listservs lately. I've set up a couple of email accounts on my server to handle the email and have been using the Opera email client. (If you don't already use Opera as your web browser, what are you waiting for? Get rid of that security hole that is IE and learn how a real browser lets you get so much more out of your time online!) Here are the two most recent sightings that has the birding world aflap: