Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

As suddenly as they arrived, they have departed.

Our avian patio neighbours spent yesterday morning feeding the chick in the crook of the rose bush into which he had somehow clambered during Saturday night or early Sunday morning. When we returned from our hike in the late afternoon, we purchased a bird feeder and some seed and hung it from a beam over our sliding patio doors.

It took about an hour before the Juncos noticed it and began to feed from it. The exhilarated chirping of the chick could be heard emanating almost invisibly from within the rose bush as the parents brought back seed for him. Then, the night fell and the patio became quiet once more.

Early this morning, Sarah could find no trace of the birds. Later in the morning, I went downstairs to see if I could determine their whereabouts, but they were nowhere to be seen. They have gone, taking our beloved baby Junco with them. We forgive them; after all, they are his real parents, not us, although it's been easy to forget that at times.

Sarah has just arrived home from work and swears she just saw one of the adult birds feasting at the new feeder, before flying off to the place where, presumably, the other adult and the chick now reside.

Hopefully, we haven't seen the last of them. They really brightened up our rather lifeless, petless house and made us realise how much we miss not having animals around the domicile.

What's that, you say? No, you're right; we don't have any children, but, over the last couple of weeks, we've come to feel very parental towards the Juncos in our patio area.

Imagine my surprise, when I went downstairs this morning to find the chick teetering on the edge of his nest. I quickly grabbed a couple of photos, realising full well that I may be witnessing the exact moment that the chick had chosen to leave the nest.

Juncos usually nest on the ground, but ours had chosen a window box. Since the chick can't yet fly at the moment it starts to venture out with its parents, there will be no going back to the nest for our chick.

As I turned away to view the photos I had just taken, I heard a plop and looked up to see that the chick was nowhere to be seen. The nest was empty! Afraid that I had scared him into jumping out of the window box, I hurried over to the spider plants that line the edge of the ground under the window box. Sure enough, there was the chick. Not knowing what to do, I cupped him in my hands and placed him back in the nest and then retreated.

The parents were now in a frenzied state, thinking I was attacking their chick, but I was only trying to undo the damage I was afraid I may have caused by just being present. The chick jumped a second time. Again, I returned him to the nest. This cycle repeated itself one last time, before the chick seemed content to stay in the nest. The parents frantically flitted back and forth, crazily chirping their anger at me. I thought they may even attack me, so enraged were they.

After lunch at Le Boulanger in Los Altos, we returned home to find the baby had deserted the nest once again. After looking for him and enraging the nearby perching parents once more, we retreated inside and kept our eyes and ears peeled, hoping to observe some sign of him.

That sign came when one of the parents flew down into the spider plants to feed him an insect. So, it seems the baby was simply ready to leave the nest and I hadn't just scared him into jumping that morning. And, like an interfering human busy-body, I had got in the way of nature by putting him back in the nest. Not only that, but I had scared the chick and infuriated the parents. Even though my intentions had been good, I still felt very bad about my interference in the affairs of creatures I do not understand.

Satisfied that the baby was safe (but rather curious where the birds would now spend the night, with the chick unable to return to the nest), we went for a walk around Shoreline to relax and take some photographs. From there, a work-out at Google's gym was followed by a meal at The Cheesecake Factory.

When we got home, it was, of course, pitch black, so we couldn't see where the birds had decided to bed down for the night. Hopefully, the chick will be warm enough, even without the sanctuary of the nest that had been his home until today. As can be seen from the photographs, he now has most of his adult feathers, so he's probably quite well insulated. In any case, the nights are fairly clement now, at around 14°C.

I'll be curious to see where the chick will be sitting in the morning.

From the reading I've been doing on Juncos, we can expect about three weeks of ground foraging to ensue from the moment the chick first leaves the nest. After that, the chick and his two parents will fly away.

Well, it seems those birds really are dark-eyed Juncos. Max, at work, positively identified them from the blurry photo I posted a few days ago. Jo also managed to trace them in one of her books.

With the weekend here, we managed to get some better shots of the birds in the brightness of today's early afternoon sun. I've put these photos up on our gallery.

It's a real joy to witness the parents coming back to the nest with food for the chick. The chick itself is a rare sight, seen only when it hears a noise and cranes its neck upwards, expectantly looking for a fly to be dropped into its maw.

Watching for the return of the adults has now turned into a popular pastime in our household, along with peering between the branches of the tree above the nest, trying to determine from where the unseen juncos' chirping is emanating. The adults seem to like to spend time perching in the tree, merrily chirping away. Perhaps the chirping is to comfort the lonesome chick; I really have no idea.

Often, though, both parents will fly away, only to return some time later with what appears to be a juicy fly in their beaks. As often as not, they'll then spend some more time on sentry duty in the tree, before flying down to the window box to drop off their tasty quarry into the chick's oversized beak. And then the cycle repeats, but for some reason never gets boring.

In the early evening, the parents will return to the nest and settle in for the evening, the chick totally obscured under the parents' plumage.

I have no idea how long it will take the fledgling Junco to reach adulthood and take to the air. At that time, I'm assuming the parents will abandon the nest, as it will presumably have served its purpose. Based on the chick's scrawny appearance and tiny size, however, I'm guessing we have at least a few weeks left to enjoy sharing our patio area with these uninvited yet delightful guests.

Well, it turned out that our one adult bird was actually two adult birds, plus at least one chick.

When I came home from work this evening, I managed to catch a glimpse of a gaping mouth, craning upwards out of the nest. Soon afterwards, either the mother or the father showed up and perched in a tree above me, so I made myself scarce indoors. I plugged in the trusty digital camera and set about trying to photograph the parent. Unfortunately, it's a small bird and was too far away, so the shots were pretty useless.

Eventually, the parent decided the coast was clear and headed down to the nest. It appeared to have something in its beak, probably food.

A short while later, the other parent turned up and landed on top of the fence. He or she was carrying what looked like a small worm in its beak. Sure enough, it, too, made its way down to the nest. Sarah had arrived home by this point, and she managed to grab a shot of it on the fence, while I peered at it through the binoculars.

The photo isn't great, because the bird was darting around and made a difficult target on which to focus, but it's probably good enough for a decent ornithologist to be able to identify the little fellow. It appears in cropped form below.

So; is it, in fact, a Junco?

To our great surprise, Sarah noticed the other day that a small bird has decided to take up residence in a flower box attached to the fence around our front yard. At first, we thought there were chicks in the nest, but it now appears that it's currently home to just one adult bird, presumably an expectant mother, incubating her eggs.

The nest is far enough from our patio door and the flower box is high enough that observing our new feathered friend is difficult, even if one stands on a chair. Nevertheless, I was able to get a reasonable look at her this morning before I went to work.

I described her to a colleague at work, who seems to think she might be a Junco. While there's some similarity there, I haven't really been able to see her well enough to say for sure that that's what she is.

It's impossible to view her in poor light, so I may have to wait until tomorrow to get another gander at her. I'll use binoculars to see if that helps with the identification. We have the camera set up on a tripod in the hope that we'll be able to photograph her. I considered buying a wireless webcam to enable better observation, but I'm worried that situating the camera on the fence above her may disturb her or — God forbid — cause her to desert the nest. I'd never forgive myself.

Do birds even desert their nest? I seem to remember once being told that it's a myth. I should really google it and find out.

Since we have no long term plans to stay in the Bay Area, we've been responsible enough not to take on the responsiblity of pets. That's lamentable, however, and a home without animals doesn't seem like much of a home at all. Until we're settled back in Amsterdam, the presence of animals in our lives is scarce, which is what makes an unsolicited arrival like this such a delightful experience.