Flit's Story or Don't Believe Them When They Say That Rescuing Hummingbirds is Not Possible

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Magic is real.

Let me repeat that: Magic is real, it can be seen, touched and even held in your hand.

I see one particular brand of magic every day, taking sips of super-saturated sugar water from the feeder hanging on a low branch of the tree right outside my family room window. Fiercely territorial, completely fearless, shimmering with unexpected splashes of color in the sunlight, these tiny bits of “humming” magic are so small and fast that they appear to live in a different, more intense and infinitely more zippy parallel universe.

I have had many personal encounters with these tiny denizens of the air over the years. Most of the time a determined critter will dash into the house like he has foolishly accepted a dare from his little feathered friends – fly around like crazy for a couple of seconds (hours in the Hummer’s ‘verse) and find someplace to perch to get his bearings. His little chest is heaving and I can usually see that, for the first time, he has decided that perhaps he made a mistake of gargantuan proportions.

If I can catch him before his panic becomes full blown, I can scoop him up oh, so gently and carefully carry him outside. If, however he is in full panic-mode, he will focus on the terrible monster he sees coming at him and will fly as fast as he can to another perch, and another and another. At this point, I generally try to let him calm down a little as I do not want to induce a hummingbird cardiac arrest.

Eventually, however, I do win and can set him free – which is what he wants anyway.

(This actually happened at an open house I was holding last year, and the people who watched me catch and release the scared tiny bird were all freaked out – freaked out!!! – that I had actually touched the icky thing. My assertion that it was only a hummingbird didn’t make any difference - neither did washing my hands in the sink while they watched, their eyes actually wide in terror. They left right away, looking horrified, probably making scathing comments about the weird dirty Realtor who touches Unclean Birds in front of potential clients! Eh. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the wonder of hummers would have been a problematic client anyway. So there!)

One time however, one magical time, it happened another way.

About 12 years ago, I lived in a house in Newbury Park, CA and had two lovely Golden Retrievers, Aislinn and Kensington. Aislinn was very red, very loving and very sweet. Kensington, on the other hand, was a beautiful dog, with classic light golden long hair, but he was just about the dumbest Golden I have ever seen. He got distracted by every (SQUIRREL!) thing, a trait that I could not train out of him, and somehow always managed to amuse with his crazy antics.

But I digress.

One spring afternoon, the man I was living with at the time was outside in the backyard talking with a friend and Kensington was, as usual, romping around them. Suddenly Kensington stopped prancing and got very interested in something on the ground, his tail wagging like mad. This was not unusual, it could have very well turned out to be a bug or a leaf or a piece of an old torn-up toy or old excrement – he wasn’t too particular: if it smelled, it was the Most Incredibly Fascinating and Amazing thing in the Entire Universe.

What was different this time was that I was called outside to “see this”.
While the two men debated only half-jokingly whether or not to just let Kenser “have it”, I saw what had so interested all three juvenile witless males.

A tiny hummingbird was hunkered down in the grass, one of its wings held slightly outstretched as if injured. I shooed all the mean boys away and carefully approached the bird. He fluttered a bit as I gently cupped my hands around him, but he did not attempt to fly away.

As I gingerly stood up, a tiny piece of magic in my hands, I could feel the barest of weight and the gentle scrabbling of tiny claws against my palm, indications of panic that quickly subsided into that very strange wild acceptance of fate I have noticed before in young creatures.

Upon entering the house, I looked for someplace to keep him that I could arrange with just my elbow, so a dishtowel was dragged into a clean sink and I carefully opened my hand to let him roll/flutter out.

He crouched down in the folds of the towel and looked up at me with bright eyes, his wing still partially extended. He did not attempt to flutter or hop, he just sat there.

This worried me a little, but, in my determination to save another flying creature, I instantly transformed into Susan: Super Savior to All Creatures Great and Small, complete with costume (no tights!) and placed a cutting board over the sink should he find that his wings actually DID work and so that Kensington, who was eagerly watching my every move with his typical Golden Smile and his ears so far forward with interest that they must ache, would not take advantage of that and do what Goldens do: retrieve birds with their mouths – which would absolutely, give my poor little injured hummingbird a major heart attack!

I mixed up some sugar water for him and place a shallow dish in the sink with him, put the cutting board back on and gave him a chance to calm down a little in privacy.

My youngest kids, Mallory and Adam, who were about 8 and 10 at the time, were also terribly interested in the proceedings and, despite my exhortations against doing so, I kept catching them lifting up the board to take a look at the little miracle all afternoon.

They, of course, wanted to name him Flit, after the feisty hummingbird in Pocahontas. Seemed like a good name. My little guy didn’t have the red slash across his throat, his throat feathers were kind of sparse and gold, but something about him suggested that he was a little on the young side.

I knew I had to find a better place for him than the kitchen sink if he survived the night.

In the morning, he was still alive, still holding his wing out and still looking up at me with wild interest. No fear, as with Jack, just a wild acceptance of his fate. I pondered his home as I went about my early morning routine and finally remembered an old octagonal fish tank and wood stand I had buried somewhere in the garage. It would be the perfect terrarium/cage for little Flit!

Finding the tank pretty much where I thought it was in the garage, I spent some time cleaning and prepping it for occupancy. Sand poured on top of flat paper towels, check – no paper towel shred for tiny little Flit – he would get lost!!

I went outside to our “orchard” of about a dozen fruit trees, searched for and found a good twig with lots of perching possibilities and brought it inside, bending it to fit inside the tank (now cage) to fit snugly against the side and under the top lip of the tank. A couple of smaller twigs were braced across the main branch and scattered on the bottom, as was a rock (found and proudly donated by my son for the cause) for visual interest. The same shallow dish with fresh sugar water was placed at the bottom.

When I was ready, I pulled the board off the sink and, talking soothingly, picked Flit up. He struggled to maintain his balance for a moment, but did not panic. I gently placed him at the bottom of the cage, which was harder than it looks… I was up on my tippy tippy toes to reach up and over that high edge with both hands carefully clasped together, straight-arming a tiny bird into the very bottom. Yeesh. Good thing no one had a camera!

Flit fluttered a bit and I carefully backed out of the room to give him some time to acclimate.

I tried to care for him with as little intervention as possible. And though I reminded my kids time and again to leave him alone, I now know that they often tip toed in there to watch the little physical manifestation of the cartoon bird who could not fly off and had to endure their stares and giggles.

A few days later, I found Flit perched on one of the lower branches! I had changed the sugar water – the levels were definitely going down - several times and finally brought in one of the feeders from outside, figuring that it would be more “natural” to sip red colored sugar water through the painted plastic flower in the bottom of a glass fish tank… yeah, I know, but at least the shape of the “flower” feed hole was right for his long beak.

This went on for a few weeks. Flit would perch on one of the lower branches and stay perfectly, watchfully still when anyone walked into the room, but he was eating and changed branch perches once in a while. He still held that one wing slight off his body, which was a little worrisome, but other than that he looked healthy.

After a while, I thought it was time to see if he was ready to fly.

I carefully reached into the cage and plucked him off his branch and took him outside, making sure that the dogs were locked in one of the bedrooms and the kids were in school. Walking out into the grass, I mentally prepared myself to “lose” little Flit as he took wing and zipped away without a backward glance, the ungrateful little wretch.

But that’s not what actually happened…

To any of you who are old enough to remember Mork & Mindy on TV, do you recall that scene that they put into the opening montage where Mork tries to set the egg free… and Mork’s look of incredulous horror when the egg did NOT fly and just fell and smashed on the counter???

Well, out on the grass, I held out my hands, opened them slowly. Flit looked all excited and bravely fluttered, his neck now shimmering with deep red jeweled tones in the sunlight, stepped off of my hand with a happy hop and immediately tumbled straight down onto the grass.

I “eeeeked”, horrified, and hastily knelt down, scooping the slightly dazed bird out of the long blades of grass and, cupping him gently, hurried back into the house, apologizing profusely and promising never ever to hurt him again!

Guilt. Huge masses of it. What had I done? *sob* Did he hurt his wing even more?? Did I scare him as he tumbled out of my hand, or when I picked him up again; did he just HATE the monster who turned gravity on HIGH? Would he ever, ever fly again?

Now this all happened before” self-esteem” but, projecting backwards, what if I irreparably damaged his self esteem and he would never be able to fly and spent his remaining short life telling a therapist all about the huge grinning evil Giant who hurled him to the ground when he was obviously still hurt???

I cradled him in my hand and with tiny little gentle as humanly possible movements, carefully, ever so carefully stretched out his injured wing. I could see nothing wrong with it, outside and underneath. It looked perfect in every way, miniature feathers, fine bones straight, but Flit could not, would not hold it flat against his body.

He did not flutter or make a sound during this exam, so I can only hope that my clumsy ministrations did not hurt him.

Another week or so went by.

The dogs started to lose interest, and the kids pretty much left him alone. He was settling in and we were all getting used to each other.

I was still very concerned. I spoke with several people who had kept various types of birds and even called one of the sanctuaries I found in the phone book and no one, NO ONE had ever heard of a hummingbird surviving in captivity. As a matter of fact, most of the people I spoke to expressed varying degrees of disbelief in my story.

I took Flit outside a couple of times during the next week and opened my hand and the sunlight again kissed his feathers with sparkling lights, but he looked up at me incredulously as if to say, “Are you NUTS???? After what happened LAST TIME???”

With a heavy heart and knowing that would never be able to train him to fly on my own, I called a local vet who cared for rescued wild creatures and told the receptionist my story. She, too, expressed the opinion that hummingbirds did not survive in captivity so I arranged to bring him in to have the vet look at his wing.

In the end, I simply could not take him to the vet myself and handed a shoebox with my miracle inside to my partner who drove away with him on the front seat.

I never saw Flit again.

When my partner returned with an empty box, my eyes welled up. He told me that Dr. Kind, the vet, examined the wing and said he could see nothing wrong with it, but it was obvious that Flit would never fly. Dr. Kind recommended that we leave the bird and he would call a sanctuary, which was Flit’s best hope of long term survival.

*sigh*

After a few days of mourning, I called the vet back and asked if there was any way to have the bird returned as he seemed to have been happy with us in his glass home. They said no, he was at the sanctuary, and retrieval would be impossible.

*bigger sigh*

Right then and there I swore that if I got another chance to rescue a bird, I would consider ALL of the ramifications before allowing it out of my sight.

And yet…

How many people have been lucky enough to say that they have been able to rescue, rehabilitate and release not just one, but TWO wild birds in an age when cynicism, materialism and a near fanatic obsession with gadgets blinds so many to the gorgeous wonder of nature around us?

Even here in the deceptively barren high desert, I am joined in my life’s journey with all kinds of critters right in my own back yard. Frogs, dogs, dragonflies, Henry the squirrel who lives under the shed, nesting doves, sparrows, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, black birds, robins and so many other flying critters (including bats!) who have all enriched my life.

So, I try to take time to enjoy my visitors every day… and watch the antics of the hummingbirds flitting around the feeder with a particularly foolish grin on my face.

Just Musing,
Susan

I have a couple of photos of Flit in my SUSAN’S OLDEN DAYS photo album on Facebook. If digital cameras had been around at that time, I would have taken a hundred pictures (yay, zoom!), but I was so afraid of scaring him that I only took these two photos.



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Letting Go

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Reflections and Letting Go


The end of the year is always a reflective time, a time when we look back once more – taking inventory of not just the passing year’s events and accomplishments, but also your life up to this point. This seems to be a sociological imperative, drummed into us from an early age: Look back at the mistakes you made, make resolutions to correct those errors, part party party and start the cycle all over again, breaking resolutions one by one as life happens.

But, I don’t really wanna talk about all that. Everyone else always does and after a while, the “advice” or “life lessons” that come from these reflections start to sound really sanctimonious and heaven knows I have nothing to feel superior about for last year!!

Soooo, instead, I want to tell you about a couple of really remarkable adventures I had saving wild birds, caring for them and finally letting them go. I know that I have written a condensed version of this story before, but here it is in all its lurid detail. OK, not so lurid. But a little messy - we are talking about birds here!

Jack
A many years ago – maybe 20ish - when I lived in Thousand Oaks, I hopped into my blue VW Vanagon to dash to the store for some much needed groceries. As I approached the corner, I happened to see what appeared to be a fat really ugly baby bird in the gutter on the corner, looking up at me with bright eyes.

In retrospect, I have no idea how I could have possibly seen it so clearly as I was on the driver’s side (duh!) and the gutter was on the right, but something compelled me to stop. I pulled over, got out and discovered that I was not seeing things, there really was a fat REALLY ugly baby bird sitting unmoving in the gutter, many many yards from the nearest tree.

He was in that bizarre wrinkled pin-cushion only-a-mother-could-love-him stage of development. His oddly bright yellow beak barely protruded in a slightly rounded orangy pointed bump, and slashed halfway around his head underscoring two bright black bead eyes that regarded me with no fear. His little head cocked ever so slightly to look up at me. I ran back to the car to get something to put him in and came out with a towel.

Upon my second approach, he did not move, but continued to regard me with oddly peaceful wild indifference. I gingerly reached down to pick him up and he fluttered slightly, but settled into the towel with the air of the very young who can only weakly accept whatever happens. The towel formed a kind of nest in the front seat and this small critter just stared at me as I got in and started the car.

I turned around (illegal U-turn be damned, groceries forgotten) and drove the block back to my house. I wondered as I tried to keep my eyes on the road... had a cat caught him and let him go for some reason? Had he tumbled out of a tree and rolled across the lawn into the gutter?

Upon my arrival home, I shooed my kids back while placing the toweled nest on the kitchen counter and raced around, finally settling on a shoe box to keep him in temporarily. Hmm. He was pretty darn big – his little head could peak up over the side, especially with all the shredded paper towels I put in there, and searched for something more “permanent”. I finally came up with an old laundry basket – plenty of room, high sides and slits to observe his new home. He settled in, scrabbling slightly to find a purchase through all the paper towel shred, and looked up at me again. I put the basket on the raised hearth of the fireplace in the living room and blocked my two youngest (both under 2 years old) in the family room, just in case.

Dawn (my oldest) was about 12 or so at the time and watched all my preparations with interest. She started making all kinds of cooing and “awwwwwwwww” noises at the little pin-cushion and eagerly asked if we could name him Jack, after a starling bird raised by a family in a book I had just read to her a few months before.

Now I HAD to save the little bird… my daughter was watching me, expected miracles just like in the book!

Soooo, shelter, check. Next step… what do you feed a baby bird??? Mommy birds eat bugs and then regurgitate them right into the little darling’s mouths, right? Hmm. I went out in the backyard scouring for little bugs for the better part of a half an hour… rolly pollies, gnats, ants, even worms, and mashed them all up into a paste since there was NO WAY I was gonna chew on bug guts and spit ‘em out, no matter how much I wanted to save the little birdy! I put a drop of the paste onto the tip of a spoon and offered it to the bird.

His little/huge beak stayed closed and he regarded me implacably.

I tried watering down the paste, slurped it up in an eye dropper and dribbled it on his beak, but all that happened was that he got even more pathetic looking with bug gut soup dribbling all around his yellow beak/mouth and ugly little fuzzy bald head.

He kept right on looking at me, beak firmly shut.

I tried all kinds of variations (no rolly pollies, no ants – this was gonna take FOREVER if I had to go searching for bugs every hour!!!) but nothing I offered was the right choice, so eventually I gave up and went to bed. I figured if he was still alive in the morning I would try again.

With morning came frustration, because the little bird was still alive and still looking at me. Trust? Indifference? There was no crying or the little screechy noises and wide open FEED ME NOW beaks that you see on TV with baby birds. This little guy seemed to just be patiently waiting for me to figure it all out.

Now remember, this was BEFORE the internet, so I couldn’t just google Care and Feeding of Ugly Baby Birds You Find in the Gutter for 4,536,021 bird soup recipe suggestions.

Suddenly I remembered my neighbor across the street had a virtual menagerie of animals and kids and (well, that is another story) so I trotted across the street to ask for her advice.

Her suggestion: rice cereal in an eye dropper.

Hmm. Never would have thought of that one, but heck, what did I have to lose? I mixed up a little rice cereal, slupped some up in an eye dropper and offered it to little Jack.

Success!! His eyes got very bright and he immediately opened his mouth, taking in the dropper halfway down his throat with strange choking gulps and demanding more. It was all I could do to keep shoveling rice cereal in his little greedy gut. He got rice cereal all over his little face as his head wobbled a bit while choking it all down, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

Jack was saved!

The next few weeks were a routine of feeding, changing the paper towels and a mayo jar lid full of water in his cage and watching him hunker down for bird naps.

He slowly transformed… looking more and more like a bird and less like he had been shot with hundreds of tiny arrows: his feathers came in, his weird yellow slashed pointy mouth retreated to the front of his face and condensed into an actual beak, and he started hopping around and making little cheep-y noises when he was hungry. I added another laundry basket inverted on top of the original one so he couldn’t fly/hop out.

Jack was no Pavlov, but every time I brought that eye dropper out and said “Cheep Cheep!” his mouth opened and he eagerly ate until he was bursting, closing his mouth firmly when he had had enough.

He grew into what I guess would be an adolescent grey and black bird with white patches, long tail feathers, sleek wings with perfect feathers that stayed tucked. To this day I am not exactly sure what kind of bird he was – I am thinking something like a mockingbird… but I digress.

Eventually I realized this little guy needed to learn to fly and since I had no experience in spreading my own featherless wings, I took him outside in the back yard and let him hop around a little, hoping maybe he would have enough natural instinct to take wing with practice.

We repeated the “getting used to the outdoors” game a few times a day over a week, with Jack’s courage and hopping gaining strength every day. When he hopped up on the chain link fence through one of the openings close to the ground, teetering rather precariously while finding his balance on the wire for several seconds, I nearly applauded! My little baby Jack was growing up! What a proud moment…

After a few days he wanted to stay out all the time, but as I was a very busy mom with not only a growing bird with an eagerness to explore the wide outdoor environs of the backyard, but also had to deal with a near-teen, curious toddler and a cooing baby, I would have to lure him back to me with the eyedropper and “cheep cheep” call.

Every trip he ventured out a little farther; his hops became short flights. I could now see the bright white spot beneath each of his spread wings as he grew stronger. One day he flew to the top of the brick wall in the back and looked beyond his rather confined home… He took off for a short flight, but I was able to call him back immediately with the eye dropper.

This scenario was the beginning of the end. Each flight was a little longer and it took a little longer for him to fly home to the eyedropper and my out-stretched hand.

And finally, one day he did not come back.

I knew that it was bound to happen. Jack was a wild bird who needed to live his life in the fast lane of the sky, full of joyful flying and meeting girly birds in out of the way deeply foliaged trees for privacy (*wink wink*), eating gnats and bugs and perhaps even raising his own family.

I was very sad and a little nervous. What if he got a cramp? What if some cat jumped out of a tree and gobbled him up?? What if some birdie-slut broke his little heart and left him crying into his bug-beer???

Trying to quell my natural protective mom-instincts, I nevertheless went out every hour and held my arm up until it ached and “Cheeped” until I was hoarse for several days, but Jack had found his freedom and didn’t need me anymore.

*sigh* Sometimes motherhood just really sucks.

Now, even years later, whenever I see one of those grey birds with the long tail and the white flashes beneath their wings, I remember Jack and how I had a most remarkable experience raising that trusting ugly little ball of fuzz and sticks into a creature of grace and lithe beauty and can only smile.


Just Musing,
Susan

NEXT: Flit, rescued hummingbird!



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