Baby birds

[scratch]

At 1am this morning, I was awoken by a large metal sound, it came from the metal awning covering my carport, but it was a larger sound than it would make if it was settling.  When it happened again, I had to investigate.  Outside I found two of the three baby finches, that had hatched last week in my rain gutter, on my car.  The sound came again, and I knew it had to be a cat.
        The cat must have been trying to paw them out, but couldn't see them directly, and either pawed them out of the gutter, or they jumped.  Once I located all of them (the third was by the rear wheel of the car), I hopped up on the neighboor's porch to look on my roof.  Sure enough, there was the black and white cat of the neighboor across the street.  Shushing him away, I proceeded to get the chicks into a box, putting on gloves to prevent any human scent that might keep the parental birds from further caring for the chicks.  The first one that I attempted to get in the box ran, really fast, from the trunk of the car to the front, and off the hood, flapping its wings all the way.  I was pretty impressed how quick it was.  The others seemed to be in a combination of too tired and too much in shock from the attack, and just sat there, so I was able to get them in the box easily.
        The next issue was protecting the chicks and looking for a possible way to reunite them with their parents.  I couldn't put them back where the cat could get at them, so I closed two flaps, leaving ample space for the parents to get in and out of the box, turned the box sideways so the opening is facing where the parents usually perch, and taped the box to the support for the awning, that was near the former nest.  High enough from the fence, and low enough away from the roof of the awning, so the cat wont be able to get them again.

This morning, I could hear the chicks begin to chirp, so at least I knew they were alive.  Then when the parents showed up, and began calling for them, they chirped in increasing earnesty.  As I watched the parents attempting to locate them, I could tell the parents were confused and becoming more frantic in their search.  I could understand that the box was something new and unfamiliar to their surrondings, but they would either land on the fence, or on top of the box.  In my own fit of desperation, I went outside, hopped up on my car and cut a new hole in the top of the box; now the parents could look down into the box to see their chicks.  It worked.  As I was leaving for work, I could hear no more of the yearning chirping.  They had been reunited, been fed, felt safe and secure again, and I'm sure they were already asleep again.  I can't wait to see them when I get home.

[yamahonkawazuki]

i do the same things, just dont disturb thenext. the parents usually will abandon it

[natedawg120]

awesome 

[scratch]

i do the same things, just dont disturb thenext. the parents usually will abandon it

Yeah, I minimized my intervention as much as possible.  I waited until after the parents finish feeding, because then I know they wont be back for a while.

I checked this morning and one of the chicks was gone without a trace, one was fine. The third unfortuneately is dead; I'll be removing it tonight.

[The Buddha]

Great work scratch. However dont worry about scent next time, birds dont have a sense of smell. Some birds (finches not sure ... gold finches will shun human contact) actually dont care for human contact ... they'd happily feed out of your hand. Sparrows and Jay's as well as pigeons are very homo philic. Yea they like Homo's.
Cool.
Buddha.