Baby in the Back Yard. Our Northern Mockingbird.

This summer, G was throwing baseballs up against the wall in our terribly unkempt back yard.  He came running into the house saying that there was a baby bird on the ground.  We went out and looked at it, and it was moving around among the leaves, making occasional peeps.  Since Rich and I had awakened, we had heard the anxious chirping and calls of the birds outside our window, and wondered what was going on, and this seemed to explain it.  The poor little guy(?) seemed pretty helpless-- his feathers were not fully formed, and had kind of a sweaty, matted look, and his little beak had yellow "lips" and that wide-mouthed look that made it seem as though meals must come from a doting parent.  I can't find the photos I took of the bird at this stage, but he didn't look ready for this adventure.

 I looked into the tree and saw three separate nests at different places.  There were adult birds flying around the tree and wall in the yard, chirping and scolding.  I have no idea about birds, and wondered if they had accidentally pushed this little one out of the nest early?  What should we do?  So, I did a little bit of internet research and found some good links about finding baby birds.  Based on this info. we built a replacement nest out of a plastic basket filled with twigs and leaves, and G climbed into the tree and zip-tied it up there.  G helped me carefully place the bird within the nest, but when we came back that evening, he was gone, a single downy feather drifting in the breeze below the tree.  Oh, no!!  I assumed a cat got him.  At least G knew that we had done our best to try to help him.

     However, three days later, G came running inside again saying another bird was out there.  Here is what I found:

 

He was hopping energetically around the base of the wall and calling out for his parents.

I did some more research, and decided that it was probably the same baby bird grown up a few more days.  We celebrated-- he had somehow survived!  Probably the plentitude of overgrown grasses gave him plenty of camouflage.  After looking online, we decided that maybe it was a northern mockingbird, a northern mockingbird who had thrived in our dried-up and un-maintained back yard for several days now. If you have a better theory about what happened, let me know.  The parents were hanging around the whole time, and occasionally became worked up about one thing or another.  Sometimes we would hear the little bird calling his parents.

Two days later, here is who I found under our terribly overgrown bush:

I saw him once more up in the branches later that day.  After a day or two more, we no longer heard him calling his parents, and the frantic adult birds disappeared from our tree and wall.  I'm hoping that means he made it.

Here are some of the links I found:
Backyard Birds of Tucson  This site was really comprehensive about lots of local bird species.
Some Q & A Site that acually helped.
Audubon Society birdweb.  From Seattle-- but I bet a lot of the same species migrate through.
Place for Wild Birds.  This site was incredibly helpful for figuring out how old the bird was.
Blog entry about Mockingbird behavior made me almost certain that's what these were because his description of the behavior was extremely similar to what I saw in the adults.
Tucson Bird Count has audio of the bird calls, which was really fun.

No Place Like Home

"You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right." ~Maya Angelou

I have been thinking about home.  About why a certain place might feel like home, even when we have never lived there.  Two of those places exist in my life.

Specifically, I am missing Seaside, Oregon.  I have tried to travel there each summer with my children.  We missed it two years ago, and are missing it this summer because we have so many other projects and expenses.

It is not the place I grew up.  As if, for most of us, there was "the place." Most Americans probably grew up in many places.

It is the place where my father's parents have lived since the late 70's-- at least 30 years.  My grandfather passed away in 1995, but my grandmother still lives in their cottage-like house with its simple square front yard two short blocks from the ocean.  My father lives in Seaside with his wife Lita, and my Uncle Steve, Aunt Susan and their son live there, too, in Gearhart.  My grandparents, uncle and father have all been businesspeople there for many years.  My dad has a 4-H baking club that entered dog biscuits in the county fair last year.  The Methodist church was filled to overflowing for my grandfather's funeral.  And some of this is why I feel at home there. 

The natural beauty of the place brings me back to Seaside in my most stressful moments, and especially in the middle of June in Tucson when half the state is on fire and any nearby mountain respite has been closed to the public out of fear of one more small spark.  Instead, we bake in the desert, and the sunlight becomes one washed-out blaze of heat.  We pray for the monsoon and bargain with ourselves about whether to economize on air conditioning or turn the thermostat down a few more degrees... we tell ourselves we deserve it. 

And my imagination wanders to the memories of driving over the mountains from Portland in a rental car, and realizing that here, we do not have to seal ourselves inside this cocoon, but can open the windows and feel the cool, humid air, carrying the smell of fir shade and green ferns.  We can stop at the spring and fill every bottle in the car with sweet, cold water.

I think of these beaches as my healing place, my cool place, a place my mind can rest.  My children can play in the elements, and within the welcoming and protective arms of a loving family.  

These are cool, wide, smooth beaches.  Beaches for walking and digging.  Beaches for dogs chasing balls. The sand is so fine Grandma likes us to hose off our feet before coming back indoors.  Whatever car we drive gathers sand in the upholstery.

I'll stop here for today...  a blog by its nature is a bit ephemeral and fragmented... I'm sure I'll return to this theme at a later time, especially if the monsoons hold off much longer around here in Tucson.

Summer is finally, truly in our hearts.

Today is the first day that I have felt summer in my home.  I'm not talking about heat, the application of sunscreen or the joy of sleeping until someone wakes me up.

I am talking:  imaginative play.  That's right, folks.  My kids have not asked to watch TV all day.  They have only bickered half-heartedly in between long bouts of puzzle-doing, dot-to-dots, dollhouse arranging, drawing, stuffed-animal-cardboard-box-train making, bubble blowing, HO scale train community building, sitting down for lunch together, asking me to play with them, dancing and playing with the dog. 

Holy cow.

I was beginning to believe that days like this might not really exist, that I had somehow invented these days in nostalgic delusion that folks my age are almost old enough to indulge in.  (Well, almost old enough.  I'll feel more entitled to it when I feel old enough to stop covering up the gray.)

I'd better get out of virtual reality and into real reality myself before the spell breaks.  Happy summer!