The Birdman of Arizona

So I promised you another bird story about Terry and here it is. You might remember the tale of the baby Quail from a few months ago. I don't think this one tops it, but it follows in a similar tradition with Terry's ongoing relationship with the wildlife in our yard.

Yesterday he was outside doing yard work on one of the last bearable days before summer officially hits. He was trimming our Mexican Blue Palm tree in the backyard, which is one of the few that are left in the yard. because he kinda likes the bluish color of the palm fronds (he's not normally a fan of palm trees).

Anyway, I'm sitting in the office and all of a sudden, I hear Terry calling me from the back door to COME QUICKLY with an urgency in his voice. So, of course, I follow him outside and see him standing next to the palm tree looking down at the branches on the ground. He's got a guilty, confused, perplexed look on his face, looks and me and says, "I saw a pigeon sitting on the wall next to the tree, so I made sure to check for bird's nests before I started.

I looked down on the ground to see a palm branch with a nest and two cute little shocked baby birds resting right in the middle of it. Fortunately, when Terry wielded his chainsaw on this particular branch it floated softly to the ground instead of twisting in the breeze and turning upside down. God had His hand on these two little vulnerable creatures.

So before we did anything else I ran in the house to get my camera. This was definitely blogworthy!

Now that I was prepared, we needed to try to figure out what to do with them...after some discussion about the fact that they're pigeons after all (Terry's comment) and doubt that they'll make it anyway, we determined that he would move the whole branch over to a shady spot in the yard in hopes that the mother would come back and take care of them.

As you can see, they do have some feathers, so there's hope that they'll be able to fly soon. Here's a photo of them in the corner of the yard and the mother (we assume) sitting up on the block wall trying to figure out what in the world happened and why her babies are on the GROUND all the way on the other side of the yard from where she left them!

This next photo is Terry showing his wild man murderous form with the chainsaw. Actually he's just getting tired of me taking pictures of the guilty party. He can get testy with the paparazzi at times.

Soon afterward we had to leave for an evening out, so we just hoped that the babies would be o.k. for the night. While we were out, we were sharing the story with a few friends and came up with the idea of putting the branch back up in the tree if we could get it to fit without dropping the nest.

Not sure if it would work, but...this morning when Terry got up, he checked on the birds and they were still there and alive. We had no idea if the mother had been with them, so not sure if they had eaten or what condition they were in.

Terry decided it was worth a shot to try to move the whole branch again. Not sure how he managed, but he was able to gently lift up the branch and set it back in the tree among the other palm fronds. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if the mother would come back and claim them again. We checked periodically throughout the morning, but didn't see any signs of mom.

Then after lunch I wandered out back to see how they were doing and lo and behold, mom was sitting in the nest with her two little ones!!! Yea! We were happy and relieved.

In this last pic you can see one of the babies sitting contentedly by her mom. And this brings us thru another chapter and happy ending in The Tale of Terry and the Birds. I wonder how many chapters we'll be adding to this tale.

Do you think the fact that he fills and maintains 3 hummingbird feeders and 1 birdseed feeder raises his chances of another chapter?

I'm not a betting person, so all bets are off...I guess you'll just have to wait and see.