Tag Archives: Loss

Robin survivor?

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This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it. Then, finally, one of the parents brought the baby a big mouthful of worms–and just as it got them it its mouth, it fell down to the deck below. There it sat, seemingly stunned for a long time. I kept watch, not wanting it to be gotten by some predator, but also not knowing what to do. I even put in a call to Avian Haven, but it was before business hours. (8:30 a.m.) I wondered if it was injured.

Finally, I went outside, and went near to it, and it started to walk away. It seemed able to walk, but it never flapped its wings like it was trying to fly. Too young I think. Only 9 days old. So I gently picked it up and put it back up into the nest. And it seemed like that might work, and the parents came back and forth, and fed it up on the ledge, where it had once again walked on to. The parents were both very solicitous and sometimes called to the chick, and sometimes scolded at me. When Avian Haven called back (after I had put it back in the nest) they suggested that if the parents were still attending to the chick, it was best to leave it with them, and not take it away.

However, would you believe it? It once again fell or jumped from the beam and landed on the deck again. It was lying on its side but then righted itself quickly and literally walked over to our glass door and looked up at me. As if to say, “help, here I am on the deck again.” So fierce its little face!

Margy was here by now, and we knew a grocery delivery would be coming soon to the back porch, so there was that pressure. So finally I went out on the deck with a shoebox, thinking to put it in that for safety, but it quickly walked away along the wall and jumped off the deck (about 2 1/2 feet down maybe) and was in a little side corner near the steps with no way out. I thought I’d try to get it to jump in the box–but by now it was acting more lively. When my hand came over its head, though, it opened its beak as if I might feed it. I was able to shoo it toward the open box, but once in the box it did not like that at all, so I quickly brought it over to the other side of the porch steps and set it onto a patch of ground cover plants. Then it decided to walk under the deck, out of my sight.

The whole morning I was never sure what to do, to leave everything alone, or to help, and in what way. I don’t know why the parents kept calling to the chick. It reminded me of when they were trying to get their previous set of chicks to fledge, but this one was obviously too young to fly. I wondered if whatever trauma had happened the night before, that left two chicks dead, and one missing, might have freaked them out so they wanted to get their chick away from that nest. Or maybe they were giving protective warnings to whatever might have disturbed the nest before. (For example, the chipmunk that frequents the area.) As a human neighbor, is my presence helpful or harmful?

The parents have come back now and are calling repeatedly, but at least one of them was down on the ground, so maybe they’ve figured out that the chick is underneath the deck. I hope so. It is too dark under there for me to see. So I may never know the fate of the chick. But I do take comfort in how fierce it was in those last moments of our interaction. It probably only needs a few more days to grow before it would be ready to fly.

Heartbreak among the robins

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Something got at our baby robins… of the four in the nest, we just found three on the deck floor, two were dead, and one still alive–I gently put that one back in the nest, but not sure if it is really okay or how it might survive, we hope the parents will come back for it. They were calling loudly, but not around now. We don’t know what happened. One had disappeared entirely. So heartbreaking… We wondered if it might have been a chipmunk.

This is not the way I hoped to mark the Solstice. How fragile all of life is right now.

Goodbye Old Pine

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Huge white pine tree trunk with three or four sections higher up, next to garage door on the left, white picket fence in front and other garage on the right.
The huge white pine tree next door was too tall to fit into one photo.

It was a sad day on July 6th when our neighbor’s huge pine tree was taken down. It had been the target of woodpeckers for a few years, so that was a sign that it was likely distressed–and in fact the tree company later confirmed the core had rotted. Situated so close to both our houses, our neighbor decided it was too dangerous to keep. But we were all sad to say goodbye too. It was a beautiful old pine.

Because of its position, the tree company needed to use our driveway to get access to the tree. I was amazed at the extent of the production. There were three huge trucks–one in the driveway with a crane to lift a worker to chainsaw the tree in huge sections. Another truck was parked and stabilized just off the street in our neighbor’s yard and used an even taller crane with a cable to carry these huge sections of branches and trunk over to the street. A third truck shredded smaller branches. At one point, I went outside to see what the biggest crane was doing, since from inside, it seemed it was lifting the huge logs right over the top of our house.

Blue sky, with tall crane and cable holding log, next to garage, trees in back.
Crane with cable lifts log up.
Blue sky, crane angled to the right over house with solar panels on roof, still carrying big log.
Crane swings over to bring log to the front of our house, to the street.

So it wasn’t actually carrying them right over the top of our house–more like around the edge of our house. Still, these were huge sections of the tree. And then the final section of the trunk was lifted up.

Huge trunk of pine hanging from cable
Huge trunk on its side in the street, with worker in yellow hard hat removing cabling. the width of the trunk comes up almost to his waist.
Worker removes the cabling from the trunk.

And then they were done, and the big logs moved to our neighbor’s front lawn to be later removed, and the trucks gone. It all happened in two hours. I’m glad that we are in less danger of a huge tree falling on our house in a big storm. In fact, we’ll also likely see more solar energy production, since the tree cast shade on our solar panels in the late afternoon. But I wanted to mark this passing, make room for the loss, and especially to remember the beauty of the pine.