Sometimes Nature isn't red in tooth and claw

Some of you who follow me on social media will know that I'm the resident bird lady here in my area. And, while I'm not a licensed rehabber, and there are certain species that I will leave to the professionals (seabirds, raptors, for instance), I've had a fair amount of success with ducks, pigeons, doves cuckoo, flycatchers ... and Cape white-eyes.  Some of my cherished memories involve caring for African penguins during the 2000 Treasure oil spill disaster here in the Western Cape. 

Over the years, I've been slowly transforming my garden into a haven for birds, and at any given moment, you can step outside and see everything from red-eyed doves, speckled pigeons, Cape sparrow, Cape white-eye, hadeda, and Cape bulbul, to even the occasional rufous-breasted and black sparrowhawks to African harrier-hawks (which of course visit because of the free lunch of slow, fat pigeons).

On Sunday, I had one of Those Phone Calls from an unknown number. "Hi, I've found some baby birds..." It's the kind of call that makes me despair. Because those words are usually followed by "I've got cats" or "I've got a dog". And for whatever reason the babies cannot be reunited with the parents or returned to the nest.

Also, with it being spring, many baby birds are fledging. Which means they're going to have a day or  three where they're still figuring out how to fly. The parents are in attendance, but the littlies are also very vulnerable to predation. The best thing you can do is keep your cats and dogs indoors, and leave them alone to get on with things. They don't need rescuing. This is how they learn to fly. Leave them the heck alone.

But sometimes, as with the call on Sunday, there was no other recourse than for me to step in. The tree in which the nest had been had been chopped down, and there was nowhere else in the garden for it to be placed. And the babies' eyes were barely open. I took them on, figuring I'd give them a slight chance of survival as opposed to none at all.

Miracle upon miracle, they survived. And thrived. I'm not going to go into all the details of hand rearing tiny birds, except that they require feeding from dawn to dusk, every half hour. And if you don't bring the food, they let you know. In no uncertain terms. This is not something for the squeamish, because it involves decapitating live mealworms and feeding them in bits. And there's poop. Lots of it. On you. All over.

Midweek, I received another call. This time, from people in Newlands who'd brought me the trio of flycatchers back in 2021 that were a successful rehab and release (they are apparently still in the garden, but happy adults now). Now they had an adult white-eye that had survived a close encounter with a cat and couldn't fly. Could I take it. So I did, figuring that if it survived, it could be a good older sibling for the two littlies, and I could eventually release them together as they are highly social birds.

Little did I know what awaited me this morning. Tweedledum and Tweedledumber as I've called the two, decided it would be a good idea to start flying just before bedtime at 11pm last night. Which meant I had to put them in the big cage with Lucky the adult white-eye (the people who rescued him insisted that was his name). This morning, everyone went out on our balcony in the cage, and not even half an hour later, an entire flock of wild Cape white-eyes rocked up.

It was madness. Countless adults arrived with bugs in their beaks, trying to feed T&T through the bars of the cage. I thought, what the heck, and took them out. And there, off they went, after the adults. Last I saw of them, they were in the thickets surrounding our garden, being fed and fussed over by an entire flock. Lucky went out, too, overjoyed to regain his freedom. 

Never in my life have I ever imagined to see such a spectacle. The best place for wild birds is in the wild, cared for by their own. My heart is singing today. Needless to say, my cats are not amewsed as they are under house arrest for the next three or so days...