|
Buzz, the Brown Thrasher
Buzz isn't really the bird's name; it's short for "Buzzard", which isn't really his name either. His real name is St. Francis-Victor (or maybe St. Frances-Victoria, but Buzz just seemed like a fellow, a certain jauntily inoffensive machismo in his manner). The name is, of course, for St. Frances, and for the carpenter who rescued him.
It was time for us to build the 16' x 16' retreat cottage and the Lord had sent us the means. So we hiked across the retreat field to the spot we'd long since cleared in the woods, and roped out the exact space. About the same time, some lovely Knights of Columbus had come to help us out once again (having done so many times already).They offered to hack a path from the cottage site through the woods to the creek, for retreatants to one day enjoy.
"Oh, but it’s nesting season for the birds," we realized, "please will you promise to check first for where nests are, and be sure to go around them?" They did and at the end of the day, one of the Knights reported proudly, "We found a nest, but we cut the parth to the right of it, so it’s undisturbed."
They took us to see it, and sure enough, there it was, nestled in the thicket of wild blueberry branches, about four feet off the ground. It was a four-tiered nest with a base of large twigs, with a layer of leaves, followed by tiny twigs, and topped off with dried grasses. Not an incredibly neat nest, but sturdy as could be. Empty. We wondered if it was last year’s or a new one.
The next day, two wonderful men arrived to do the carpentry, one a Baptist minister and the other, a good young man from his church. They and their wives had become dear to us well before now, when they’d first rescued us. (When the monastery’s three-month-old siding had delaminated and needed to be entirely replaced...just the Friday before the Sunday Dedication ceremony in which those dear to us would share in the official blessing and consecration of the monastery to God.)
As soon as they arrived, we showed them the nest, just to the left of the new Creek Path, and only ten or fifteen feet from where they would be building the cottage. "So, please will you be sure that when you're working you don't disturb the parents? The first egg was just laid this morning and we don't want to scare them off. They were here first... " we pleaded. Adding, "they're Brown Thrashers. Georgia's state bird. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs. While one is on the eggs, the other stands guard. Isn't that nifty? . . . "
"You're thinking 'crazy nuns' again, aren’t you?" Mother Veronica asked them with a grin.
Four days in a row there was a new egg each day. The parents, whom of course we
named Mary and Joseph, became so used to us that they'd let us walk the Creek Path less than two feet away from them without leaving their eggs. When they were off the nest, but still within sight of it, they would allow us to take a progress-peek into the nest.
After the fourth egg was laid, full-time setting them began. The bird book said that it would take12-14 days for the eggs to hatch. It was right, and early one morning we discovered three of the eggs were tiny ugly naked little hatchlings. Mary and Joseph had successfully hatched three baby chicks of four eggs. It would be too confusing to have Baby Jesus Numbers One, Two, and Three (to say nothing of sacriligious or something surely...) So we named them Curly, Larry, and Mo.
Each morning we took a progress-peek, and oh, what a miracle to watch. Each 24-hour period brought immense growth and change. But how we worried. Because, at the same time that spring birth was taking place in the Thrasher world, it was also taking place in the Rat Snake world. The way that God created Rat Snakes is for Rat Snakes to like baby bird the way we like chicken. Before becoming too judgemental about the snake, we might pause to recall that we humans eat veal... and suckling pig... and poor innocent sacrificial lamb chops.....) Twice already, the fellows had chased away a snake (We’d begged a promise from them, the first day they arrived, that they wouldn’t kill any snakes [or anything else] while they worked on our cottage).
Yet almost unconsciously we'd labeled that snake "The Enemy", not because we don't like snakes (we do). But because it was interested in preying upon "our" Curly, Larry, and Mo and because "our" Mary and Joseph were up against such odds of nature to fledge them successfully. The book said it would take from nine to thirteen days after hatching. before the babes would fledge the nest. And even then the danger wouldn't be over for our little family, since it takes at least a day or two for most bird-chickies to learn to fly once they're out of the nest.
And then we met the snake personally. (That usually puts a crimp in the ease with which one can continue labeling someone as Enemy.) S/he was likely a Black Rat Snake. This day we'd been working in the retreat field and were headed toward the shade of the woods for a break. Just at the edge of the tree line, there were Mary and Joseph, acting very strangely. One of them was on the ground hopping vigorously back and forth, not quite agitatedly, but certainly energetically. The mate, just a foot or two away, also hopped forward and then backward. We watched them a bit, staring as we tried to figure out what they were doing. But we still couldn't figure out why they were acting so strangely.
Ten or fifteen minutes later when we emerged from the woods, Mary and Joseph were still in the same spot. Though their bunrt-sienna-brown coloring camouflages them very effectively, their hopping motion caught our attention again. As we turned to look at them, there s/he was! Coiled in the two feet of space between the parent birds, a beautiful black snake, all shiny with a black and white "tummy". How had we missed seeing that big snake when we first noticed the birds?
For twenty or thirty minutes we watched the drama from three or so feet away. As the snake remained coiled between the birds, he focused attention on the Thrasher who was hopping, side to side and sometimes forward a bit and then back, just 18" away . The other Thrasher would then leap straight up in the air, maybe a foot or so, and come down on the poor snake from behind, hitting hard with a fairly long, slightly curved, and sharply-pointed beak. The snake would turn to its attacker in defense and immediately the first Thrasher would hop around, obviously trying to refocus the snake on itself. Again its mate would hit from above and behind. Over and over they did this, occasionally switching roles for awhile, but not letting up for even ten seconds at a time. Such physical energy expended, just when they must surely be eating less, since they were hunting for and feeding three nestlings.
We understood, from their behavior, that our Mary and Joseph were trying to drive the Black Rat Snake away from their nesting area. And by now we were feeling quite sorry for the poor snake, who was just a hungry creature trying against difficult odds to find a bit of lunch. So we took a piece of broken branch and gently prodded the snake toward the creek. But s/he couldn't just move off because the birds didn't fly off when we humans stepped in to help. Now the poor snake was surrounded on three sides, one against four.
Ever so calmly and gracefully, reminding one of ballet, with her fluidity of slow motion, the snake lifted straight up, out of her coiled position. With nearly three feet of her length exposed in reaching for an overhead branch, remaining length still coiled, the snake wound her athlete's body ever-so gently around the branch and pulled herself up with agility and muscle control that put our human Olympics to shame.
The birds became more animated and hopped up to the snake's branch. Again, one parent bird distracted the snake while its mate hopped onto a limb a foot or so above and behind the snake and then dove to hit him. Meanwhile, Curly, Larry, and Mo were about twenty feet away, bulging out of their nest.
Again we poked our arrogant human noses into matters, climbing into the tree to urge the snake along toward the creek and not back toward Curly, Larry, and Mo. But the snake seemed designed for tree-climbing and lifted himself higher and higher, till at the end of forty or so minutes, we were all about twelve to fifteen feet up in an elderly pine tree.
Two Brown Thrashers, a Black Rat snake, and two humans were then joined, first by a Robin who flew to a branch about three feet from the drama, and watched. In a few minutes another bird also arrived, perching not far from the Robin and obviously watching the fray. The Thrashers continued their distract-attack while we watched for twenty minutes more. They were still at it, with their remaining audience of two, when we left to go peek at the three nestlings. They were all but overflowing the nest; it was nearly time for them to fledge.
From a letter written at Pentecost that year:
The last time i wrote, i told you about Mary and Joseph and their Brown Thrasher babies, Curly, Larry, and Mo... and their nemesis, the Rat Snake... The book of Mr. Audubon's bird wisdom said the babes would fledge the nest some time between days nine and thirteen. This past Wednesday was day eight and we found them just before dark, all snuggled in their nest, ugly as could be, with little pinfeathers scattered over their scrawny little bodies.
But early early in the morning of day 9, they were missing. It was too early in the day for them to have stirred from the nest yet, and so we feared the rat snake had returned. Sure enough, one of the carpenters working on the cabin said he had seen a snake shortly before we arrived and had tried to chase it away but had lost sight of it. We looked for the babes all over the woods floor but found none of them. Worse, Mary and Joseph were not returning to the nest as they had been doing all along, so we felt sure the snake had feasted.
About 5 hours later we were working in the garth outside of the refectory up at the monastery, when our carpenter came (literally) running up the driveway hollering for us. When i hurried out, he said, "Sister, do something!" and thrust a lone little nestling into my hands. He told me that he had found it lying in a wet boggy area about twenty feet from the nest, with ants already crawling all over it. We guessed that perhaps the snake had found the nest, taken all three fledglings into its mouth, and then when crawling along the ground, momentarily gaping to get a better "hold" on his lunch, the bird in the middle of the bunch had dropped out.
The little creature was ice cold, soaking wet, totally limp, and barely breathing. i had cared for many patients during and at death and i felt certain this tiny hypothermic creature had only a breath or two left; it looked already dead. i snuggled it to my chest and hurried to the refectory. Mother opened a can of dog food that we kept on hand in case one of our dogs needed to be bribed to take a medication. We mixed that with a can of animal replacement formula that we kept on hand in case of needing to feed an orphaned possum or some such critter. We force fed the poor little bird, kowing it was likely way too late. We have since learned, that once should NEVER try to force feed a bird, or any wild creature.
Luckily (providentially...) in 35 minutes the little creature warmed up and stirred and demanded more food. We fed and fed and fed and he perked up enough for us to take him back to the blueberry thicket nest in case Mary and Joseph came back. We sat a bit away from the nest and watched and prayed, but they never came back. So we took the little one and his nest back to the monastery and put him in a laundry basket on the bathroom counter.
Already i was worrying because milk is constipating and an animal with an intestinal obstruction dies a painful death. Milk also causes diarrhea and an animal can die from dehydration in that way. But that end of baby worked right too! And quite admirably, i might add. Mr. Audubon says that the young baby defecates a fecal sac that the mom bird then carries off intact, and deposits away ftom the nest, to keep the nest location a secret from predators. Toward the fledging time, when the nest will not be occupied much longer and need not be so secret, says Mr. Audubon, the baby will wiggle its little bottom to hang over the edge of the nest, thus saving mom the necessity of housecleaning, just when she and Dad have to hunt full-time to feed the ever-hungry chicks.
Sure enough, on day 10, our little one began doing just that. Talk about a couple of proud mamas! You'd have thought we invented the improvement ourselves! Or laid the egg he hatched from.Each hour on the hour, we'd feed the babe just as Mary did, except that, lacking beaks to gently shove food down his throat, we had to use the turkey baster. And, without fail, every single time, immediately after the first slurp of food, baby would wiggle his little bottom over the edge of the nest and reward us. And that darned fecal sac is one of God's best ever ideas---it adheres very nicely intact to a tissue. No splatter and no mess! Diapers should be so effective!
Then yesterday, on day 11, the little guy started rejecting the formula. We called the Chattanooga Wildlife Rehab Center and were told that baby wanted BUGS, WORMS, CATERPILLERS, and BEETLES. That posed a problem. i absolutely cringe to see things suffer, even bugs. If there's a bug that i must kill for some reason, i smoosh it fast and hard so it won't have to suffer. But baby needs the bugs alive. That means we must cut up worms into edible sized portions, injure beetles, and feed caterpillars live. i was certain i just couldn't do it. But baby flutters his little wings in that dear food-begging motion typical of baby birds, and gapes his little beak sooo-wiiiiiiide-open, waiting trustingly. So i grit my teeth and cringe and cut up those poor innocent insects for my baby (one of God's stupidest ever ideas...why can’t everything just graze?)
We decided the kid was probably going to live and so we'd give him a name. You can hardly have a Curly without Larry and Mo. .. and having just the one babe now, the babe of Mary and Joseph, the name of choice seemed obvious. But then it just didn't work---crooning, "Come on little Jesus, swallow the nice juicy worm," so we named it Francis Victor or Frances Victoria, whichever the case may be. But we nicknamed him "Buzzard".
And today, day 12, little Buzz began preening his feathers and stretching his wings, all by himself. Now if only he will progress to the next step of pecking at and picking up the bugs on his own instead of having to be mom-fed. Then he'll be able to take to the skies. The wildlife place said we dare not turn him loose until we've taught him to hunt and eat on his own.
Indeed we nearly despaired of Buzz ever teaching himself to eat. No dumb bird, this one; why lift a fork if Mama's there every hour to push cricket after cricket down your gullet for you?!
The Wildlife folks had told us that we should extend the periods between feedings, leaving some bugs there for him, so that his hunger would motivate him to investigate the bugs and find them yummy. "He'll feed himself when he gets hungry enough, Sister," they said with Tough Love. But it is incredibly difficult to overcome the pressure of that maternal instinct to keep a baby well-fed, and so our hourly feedings only stretched to almost-two-hours-between, but then we rushed to his yammering, gaping beak and shoveled in the crickets and mealworms until little Buzz fell asleep sated, after the last little butt-wiggle over the side of the nest, and his gaping beak drifted shut.
The straw that broke the nuns' backs came at the feeding in which Buzz demanded his lunch with little stomps of his feet, for all the world like an impatient three year old having a "hurry-up-Mom" tantrum. He demanded (and got...) seven jumbo crickets and then, as he gaped for the eighth, we saw movement in his crop and heard a cricket chirp, rather desperately it seemed, from INSIDE our little babe! "Aaargh, that poor cricket has been eaten ALIVE!" Sr. Angela screamed in cringing dismay. Mother Veronica nodded calmly, but also with a dismayed cringe. "That's it, no more live crickets shoved down his throat. He can do his own killing." And we set our jaws in firm resolve as we tiptoed out so as not to awaken little Buzz.
The next time he wakened, gaped, fluttered, and squawked, we took him from the bathroom to the little screened room on the deck. We'd prepared it while he slept, with small trees we'd thinned from the woods and jammed ceiling to floor in each comer. We'd placed wood chips, pine needles, and leaves on the deck floor to resemble the forest floor where Thrashers scratch for bugs to eat.
We transferred Buzz from his human-finger-perch to a branch close to the "ground". He'd gotten used to perching on a finger, and once his pinfeathers were replaced with real feathers, one could wave an arm up and down while Buzz held onto a finger-perch, causing him to wildly flap his wings, thus strengthening the muscles he'd one day use to fly. This was to correlate as closely as we could make it, to the natural wing-strengthening that would have occurred when following his parents around, in short fluttery flights of a few feet, for most of his first few days out of the nest.
At any rate, here we all were, on the "ground" in the forest-floor-litter, Buzz gazing up impatiently, mouth agape, wings aflutter. He focused his attention on the cricket struggling on the end of a forceps, and as we set it on the "ground", Buzz cocked his head as one eye peered at the cricket. No stupid cricket either; one leap took that insect fast "outa Dodge". Buzz never saw it leave because he was focused on the two mamas who should, in his expert and impatient opinion, be shoveling crickets by now.
But the mamas were cavortmg around the screened room looking frighteningly like Bette Davis on the beach in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane". Except Bette Davis was crazy and we were just trying to catch that agile cricket.
There was a dear sweet friend of ours who, after learning that we were driving about 45 minutes one-way to the only bait-shop that carried big juicy crickets, had started calling every few days to ask, "Sister, do you need me to bring you another 300 crickets when i see you at Mass tomorrow?"
Anyway, cricket retrieved, we set it down once again for the now downright-fractious bird. He was fractious because he was really hungry. He'd feed himself! Not. Glanced at that cricket as it leaped away, stomped his little feet in annoyance, and fluttered harder his wings. 'Dumb humans' was written all over his little face
"Well, how are we supposed to keep the cricket from getting away so the poor little bird has a chance to sample it?" i asked Mother, who nearly always had an answer. A thought flitted across Mother's face and she looked sad. Mother almost never ever looks sad, and instantly I intuited the thought. "Uh-uh, no way am I going to injure these poor defenseless crickets." Half an hour later, three injured crickets lay in a lovely pink and green flowered saucer at the bird's feet. He glanced at their writhes of agony and fluttered his wings, begging pitifully for his mommies to feed him. We hand-fed him one of the injured crickets and forced ourselves to leave him un-sated for the very first time, as poor Mother listened to the bemoaned, "Geez, now i'm torturing bugs--does that mean i'll grow up to be a serial killer?"
Eventually Buzz learned to feed himself. We added applesauce with raisins and he snacked on it between crickets and mealworms. He grew longer and taller and his eyes turned that typical adult yellow color. He was the handsomest Thrasher we'd ever seen.
We built a small screen cage in which we'd transport him back to the forest and blueberry tangles near the retreat cottage to set him free, right back where he'd started from. During Summer CCD for the kids of our parish, Buzz attended class one day so the kids could see him close up and be his perch while waving their arms to exercise Buzz's wings.
Just shortly thereafter, the Great Day of Freedom arrived. We took Buzz to the retreat field where his parents could be seen feeding at anthills from time to time. Certainly our intelligent little guy would fly directly to the cottage yard and Be Free.
He took one panicked look around that huge open expanse of mowed grassy field, and flew about twenty feet up into an elderly majestic pine. (Dumb nuns should have realized that a bird named for thrashIng around in, and camoflaged by, the underbrush, would be more comfortable in underbrush for the first time, than placed vulnerably in a huge open field.) We turned resolutely and left him in the tree, not fifteen feet from where his parents had battled the snake we assume got his siblings. We only looked back a few dozen times as we crossed the field. We'd prepared him the best we could.
That evening at dusk our feet had taken us back to the spot before we realized it. There on the same branch of the same pine sat our little Buzz. And buzz he did, in a direct dive from the pine limb to our feet and then up to Mother's wrist, where he perched frantically begging to be fed, while we walked back to the truck, drove up to the monastery, carried him through garth, refectory, kitchen, cloister, office, bedroom, and deck to "his" screened porch room.
The next morning however, we started all over again. This time the mamas took Buzz all the way back to the wild blueberry tangles next to the cottage. After transferring him from finger-perch to blueberry limb, we sat down on the ground two feet away and arranged his saucer of cricket and mealworms and applesauce with raisins, as well as leaving some of the insects on the tree root next to the saucer. We stayed awhile and told him what a fine young fellow he’d become, and that certainly no other Thrasher had ever had asolutely all the insects it wanted every single time it wanted them, without even a sibling to rival, as our boy had, and so he was in tip-top condition to return to The Wild and Freedom. We then walked slowly but steadily back to a spot near the creek, which we've always called the Jesus Rock. Buzz remained at his birthplace (hatchplace?) and we were elated.
Indeed we were elated, and, truth be told, none too humble as we verbally patted ourselves on the backs. "Well, we kept him alive and helped him thrive and returned him to Nature as God his Creator intended!" we told each other in various variations of the same sentence over and over. When one really really knows one has done God's will (and we surely had; the bird given Freedom proved this), one can't believe how very wonderful indeed it feels. And of how important it is to continue on that same path of doing the Lord's will, and of being proud (only in the best sense of the word, of course) of what one had just done. We had, we repeated again, kept him alive and helped him thrive and returned him to Nature as God his Creator intended. . .
Except that he'd heard us telling ourselves and each other of this wonder, and he'd flown the five or six hundred feet from the cottage, to right smack at Mother's elbow (as she sat on the ground at the creek's edge by the Jesus Rock.
We took him back to the retreat cottage area. He flew back, skimming along the treetops, which was contrary to how the book said they flew and contrary to how we'd seen his parents fly. We took him back. He returned. Repeatedly. Until we had the sense to let him choose the Jesus Rock area if that's what he wanted.
So each day we'd arrive just before or after Mass with a few crickets, turned loose live and unharmed now, so that at least they had a leaping chance to avoid becoming Buzz’s breakfast. Soon we substituted the applesauce with raisin dessert for the cricket meal, to force Buzz to hunt on his own.
For a week or two Buzz was waiting for us each morning and flew to us periodically during the day as we worked at various spots. It then evolved such that he wasn't waiting right there, but if we called him or if he heard our voices, he'd come. By this time he did not want to perch on us and he didn't want us getting too close.
At first he wanted us to keep a foot or two away. Then he preferred that we keep three or four feet away and not approach him any more closely. He could approach us but became increasingly skittish about our approaching him. We were relieved about that—we’d seen enough Disney stories to know that a protagonist would go after our trusting little guy, so we didn’t want him to be too trusting.
The first time we saw him take a dust bath in a sandy bare spot right out in the open next to the creek, we worried a hawk would get him. He'd spread out cruciform and seem to go into a torpor. For well over a minute (timed on Mother’s watch while i watched for hawks) he'd lie there looking like a sacrificial lamb, or a terribly stupid one. But the hawk never happened by at those times and we were relieved.
Through the summer and into autumn we had the pleasure of seeing our little guy all grown up and thriving on his own, acting totally Thrasher-ish, even in the ways we had never taught him. Thank God for instincts. We'd see other Thrashers, as we had all along, a couple of pairs and one threesome that we assumed were the offspring of one of the pairs, about Buzz's age, and a single Thrasher that struck us as being Buzz’s age, but he never joined any of them.
Yet we could always tell automatically or unconsciously whether a particular Thrasher was Buzz, possibly in the way a mom can tell apart her identical twins . We didn't know how we knew, but we did. The visits decreased in frequency, gradually.
Then he was gone.
Imagine our hope the following Spring when we first noticed a nesting pair of Thrashers flitting about in a huge wild rosebush that stretched 20 feet tall and more than half that in width, at the Jesus Rock where Buzz had finally taken Freedom. Disappointingly, as one of the birds came into clear view, we both shook our heads instantly and simultaneously; no, that's not Buzz.
But just moments later its mate, "our" very own Buzz, ran-hopped into view. Keeping his distance, but coming far far closer to us than the mate. Even aside from that, we knew it was Buzz, recognized him. We joyfully watched the progress all spring as Buzz and mate successfully fledged four young. We were as proud as two Granny-nuns could be.
We were equally grateful to watch Buzz's parents nest in a blueberry tangle just five or six feet away from their previous year's nest, at the cottage. They were just as willing this time as the last, to let us sit just a few feet away and watch all the proceedings, from egg-laying to fledging three out of three babes. We were grateful that the proper mom and dad were raising these young. And appreciative, for the first time in either of our lives, of how very hard, against such large and numerous odds, parent birds must work to give their offspring even just a chance at life. A Miracle.
copyright 04/2004
|
Site Navigation