May 29, 2006
Our Very Own House Finch Chicks
Ed and I went sailing on Saturday. When we put up the mainsail, we were very surprised to see a bird’s nest stuck to the side of the sail near the boom. By the time we saw it, the nest was rotated 90% and a couple of the chicks fell out onto the deck. We grabbed the chicks, put them back into the nest with their other two siblings, and then stuck the nest in a bucket below deck for the rest of the sail. As you can see from the pics, they spent most of the time sleeping, but whenever the nest was moved, they concluded (hoped) that it was feeding time and craned their necks up as far as they could.
We called a bunch of people to try to figure out what to do with them or where to bring them. The best suggestion seemed to be to leave them in a tree nearby where the mother would hopefully find them. Unfortunately, there really weren't any trees near the boat slip, what with the water and all. We ended up leaving the nest up underneath the dock, which at least was fairly sheltered and wasn't too far away from the boat.
On Sunday, I did some research and came across the Peninsula Humane Society, which has a big wildlife center for orphaned animals. I drove back up to Sausalito and grabbed the nest (now chirping away - apparently they taught themselves to chirp overnight) and brought them down to the PHS, where they will be hand fed until they are ready to be released back into the wild.
Posted by Stephen Bronstein at May 29, 2006 07:51 PM