The Bluebird Effect

by Julie Zickefoose

  So it was that I walked out on an August afternoon in the late ’80s to see a brilliant male tanager in hot pursuit of an olive-green youngster. The garden I tended on a Connecticut nature preserve was protected from marauding deer by nine feet of rusted stock fencing. It was nearly invisible against the greenery, a cruel steel net that claimed many a life, despite the streamers of white sheet I had tied all over it. The beautiful male tanager hit it and dropped like a stone, dying, while the juvenile passed on through, injured but alive. In a split-second bit of calculated triage, I pounced on the juvenile bird before it could cripple off into the underbrush. Sighing, I picked up the lifeless male in the other hand and headed into the house.

  Examining the youngster, I found no broken bones, but it did have badly bruised breast muscles, which would rob it of flight for about a week. I set up a cage in the living room and went off to chop some fruit for it to eat. When I came back, the tanager was calmly eyeing me and the three other permanently injured birds then in my care. I liken these birds to bellwethers, who cue new arrivals that there is nothing to fear in my home. The tanager hopped down to its feed dish like any tame canary and helped itself to the food. Intrigued by its calm demeanor, I opened its cage door. It explored the carpet and the understruts of the couches and chairs. It was clear that this bird was calm enough to be given supervised liberty. I was glad, for I hate to cage any bird, unless it’s frantic and likely to injure itself otherwise.

  I couldn’t resist naming the little green bird Tangee, after an orangish lipstick my father always said my mother wore when they were first dating. Needless to say, I became fond of the bird and thrilled to see it gain strength and flight powers each day. At last Tangee was flying strongly between the tops of open doors in the house, and I knew it was time to set the young thing free. It vanished into the treetops, with only its soft cherwee call to tell me where it had gone.

  The next morning, I was at the drawing table when I was startled by the sound of bird toenails on the windowsill at my elbow. Clinging to the narrow sill was Tangee. And Tangee had brought a friend—another juvenile scarlet tanager. From the similarity in their stage of molt, I thought it might be a sibling. Together, they peered in at the cages, and at me, only inches away from them through a pane of glass. I forgot to breathe; my head buzzed with the thought that perhaps Tangee had been able to communicate something of his experience to a companion, sufficiently piquing its curiosity to make it fly down and land on a windowsill so breathtakingly close to me. They clung for several seconds, heads turning as they took in details of Tangee’s former home, then flew together into the thick canopy of a sugar maple in the backyard.

  Though this magic moment was more than twenty years ago, I will never forget the image of this free-living bird escorting another tanager to the place where it had been sheltered and healed. It was a thank-you note from the wild, a lightning bolt, illuminating my world with joy. It was tanagers being tanagers, in all their unfathomable beauty and grace.

  The Summer of Phoebes

  FOR A NUMBER of years, I’ve been painting portraits of nestling birds as they come my way. I work with birds that nest in my boxes, as well as orphaned and injured birds that come to me each summer. As a licensed songbird rehabilitator, I never know what might be at the other end of the phone line: ruby-throated hummingbirds, chimney swifts, bluebirds, or waxwings; or perhaps another house sparrow, starling, or grackle.

  I had started a series of paintings of eastern phoebe nestlings in 2005, hoping to capture their day-to-day development. I’d borrow a chick each day, paint its portrait, and return it to the nest to be raised by its parents. Carefully, I teased the new hatchling out of its nest. It was a bewitching shade of yellow—unlike any other nestling I’d ever seen, with a strange, pointed beak and copious gray down. As I painted a couple of studies, I noticed moving specks on its thin skin—mites. With a magnifying glass, I could see them, red with the chick’s blood, clustered in its ears. Ugh! I dug them out with a toothpick, cleaned the chick as best I could, and returned it to its nest. I was afraid such an infestation would weaken or kill the chicks, and I didn’t want that to happen to any bird, much less to such precious subjects for my study. What could I do? I couldn’t use insecticides; the tiny birds’ thin skins and high metabolisms would make them extremely vulnerable to poisoning.

  I decided to remove the chicks when they were a little older and stronger, microwave and then cool the mud nest, and replace the whole, mite-free affair on the little plastic fuse box under our deck. I’d station my daughter (aptly named Phoebe) on a ladder next to the nest to keep the parent birds from flying close enough to find their nest missing while it was being purged of mites. It sounds crazy, but I knew it could work.

  Full of anticipation and adrenaline for the experiment to come, I armed myself with Tupperware, spatula, and daughter, and climbed the ladder. I reached into the nest and found the chicks cold—dead. In just a day, the mites had killed them. A moving gray felt of the arachnids swarmed up my hand. These were probably chicken mites, brought into the nest by a feather picked up by one of the adults. What miserable creatures. Thus ended 2005’s attempt to paint phoebes. Rats, rats, rats.

  All winter, the phoebe nest stood empty, and the big sheet of watercolor paper I’d prepared for the phoebe series had but one small study in the lower left corner. When a pair of phoebes arrived and nested again in the spring of 2006, I was delighted. I prayed there would be no mites this year. I rolled a chick out of the nest and examined it—clean as a whistle. Whew! I was off on my adventure with a new species.

  What funny little birds. They were covered with long, grayish yellow down, long-billed, and strange-looking. These would likely be the only baby flycatchers I’d ever have my hands on, and I was enjoying it thoroughly. Even at Day 1, the chicks’ chip note was exactly like their parents’ alarm call. Amazing. I’d never heard any passerine baby give a call that sounded anything like the adult’s! But then, phoebes are wired differently from most oscine passerines. Experiments by Donald Kroodsma showed that the phoebe’s song (and probably its call note) are hard-wired in its brain. A young phoebe, raised in soundproof isolation and deprived of any auditory contact with its singing father, develops a perfectly normal song, unlike most oscine passerines, for which imitative learning is a key component of song development.

  Each day, I climbed the stepladder to borrow a chick for a few minutes and paint a new portrait. My dream was coming true, and I was not about to lose this brood of phoebes to mites or snakes. I watched carefully for signs of infestation. I had already baffled the nest, which sat alongside a drainpipe and atop a little plastic fuse box under our sheltering deck. I put sheets of plywood on the deck to create a snakeproof roof overhead, and two tempered glass shower doors beneath the nest to enclose the gutter in a shallow V so no snake could slither up it. I was pretty sure I had it covered. But one never knows.

  JUNE 7, 2006. The chicks are ten days old, and I’m getting the materials together to paint my daily portrait. My six-year-old son, Liam, comes running to tell me there is a big black rat snake on the rocks by the fishpond. We run down and watch it drink, marveling at its just-shed perfection. As it turned out, the rat snake needed to wash down its meal of four phoebe chicks from the nest under the deck. Despite my ugly, painstakingly built glass-panel baffle, despite my fierce devotion to protecting the nest, I had inadvertently mounted one of the shower doors wrong-side out, and there was a small metal lever halfway up its length. That was all the big snake needed to give it a hitch the rest of the way up. I stared at the Goldbergian contraption, wondering how I could have overlooked that fatal flaw.

  These weren’t just any phoebes; they were the subjects of a number of paintings for my book. I felt the loss keenly, personally and professionally. They were just getting their feathers. Nothing should have to die that young.

  Not one to stand around bawling, I got a small piece of wood, some long nails, a hammer, and my ladder. First, I removed th
e used phoebe nest and put rocks atop the relay box so no bird could nest there again. The spot is too hard to safeguard, and I’m not even sure that the shower door’s metal handle was at fault. There were dozens of ways a snake could get to that nest. Then, I put up a shelf where the snake would have to grow wings to reach it—about ten feet away, with no climbable downspout beneath it.

  Next, I put the old phoebe nest in the oven to kill any mites or other parasites lurking within it. I figured 250 degrees for a half hour would do the job. The odor of baking mud filled the kitchen. I dampened the mud in the well-cooked nest and stuck it securely to the new, safe shelf. As I was putting up the shelf, the male phoebe began to sing from just down the hill.

  I mourned the lost phoebes all that afternoon. The next day felt empty without them to paint and watch. I wondered how many seasons it would take for me to complete the phoebe painting. The first brood I’d tried died of a mite infestation on Day 2. This second brood made it to Day 10, and, despite my efforts, got turned into snake food. The male phoebe sang intermittently around the yard. I didn’t know if the pair would accept my new shelf, or if they’d even hang around. If my babies got eaten, I’d quit the place for good.

  The phone rang around noon that same day, and a tentative voice asked if I was the bird person. I know now by the first couple of words when someone has a baby bird for me. They don’t know whom they’re calling or what to expect, and it takes them a while to stammer out what the problem is. I let the caller go a little bit, then asked, “What have you got for me?”

  “I’ve got two baby birds. We were tearing down a shed in the backyard, and we found this nest.”

  My heart leapt. Carolina wren, barn swallow, house sparrow, starling, or impossible dream: eastern phoebe. It had to be one of those five.

  “What color are they?”

  “I dunno. Fuzzy. They’ve got pretty long beaks.”

  Oh, yes. Long beaks are good.

  “What does the nest look like?”

  “It’s got grass and maybe a little bit of moss.”

  Now we’re down to wrens or phoebes. I’m thinking phoebes. I can’t believe this.

  “Where was the nest?”

  “On top of a little relay box.”

  Yessss.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m out Twenty-six, near Wingett Run.”

  That couldn’t be any closer to my home.

  “How did you get my number?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this, but I looked in the phone book under ‘Bird’ and didn’t find anything. So I just figured there ought to be an 800 number. I dialed 1-800-WILDLIFE and got somebody who gave me your number.”

  Not knowing what to do, and hoping the parents would find their displaced brood, she had put the nest in a nearby tree for the night. It had rained all night. And somehow they had survived.

  “I don’t want them to die. Can you take them?”

  “Absolutely!” I stammered, still reeling from the perfection of it all. Hold on, Julie. They could still turn out to be house sparrows . . .

  I’d been doing bird rehabilitation since 1982, and I’d never even come close to getting phoebes. I tried to hold myself back, knowing that, even if they turned out to be phoebes, they could have pneumonia by now. I gave the caller directions, and her car pulled into my driveway not twenty minutes later.

  The birds are still in their mud and moss nest. Phoebes. Two perfect little phoebes. And they are nine days old, a day younger than my brood of four was when they were eaten by the snake. I cradle the nest in my hands, seeing the rest of the phoebe painting rolling out in my mind’s eye. Mites begin swarming up my arms. I take the phoebes out of their nest, swaddle them in a box with tissues, and put the nest in a slow oven to bake for an hour or two. The house fills, again, with the smell of baking mud. I’m so thrilled I don’t know where to begin. First, I feed them. I’ve made a bird omelet: scrambled egg mixed with dried insects and ground eggshell. They’re debilitated, dehydrated, and scared, and I will have to force-feed them for several hours before they begin to gape for me. Each one voids an enormous fecal sac, accumulated since the evening before. It’s 1:00 P.M., and I figure they’ve been without food for eighteen hours. That’s pushing it for baby birds.

  Kandy and her teenage daughter, Sandy, stand and watch, amazed that they have found someone to care for their birds so close to home. When the babies are fed, I dance into the studio and pull out my interrupted painting to show to my benefactors, explaining that it will be part of a book I’ve been working on for several years. Their eyes widen as they grasp the cosmic collision of it all, and see birds that look exactly like their foundlings, there on the page before them.

  “I don’t know if you’re religious,” Kandy says slowly. “But I think God did this.”

  “They talk about him working in mysterious ways. This has got to be one of them,” I reply.

  “They won’t die, will they?”

  “They are not going to die. I’ll take good care of them, and I’ll paint their portraits every day, and I’ll release them right here on the farm.”

  “And we’re gonna be in your next book?”

  “You are definitely going to be in my book.”

  I take their picture, smiling shyly, glued together, holding the two nestling phoebes, a cosmic intervention, gift beyond price.

  I am a bird-mother now. It’s a familiar thing; I’m a bird-mother every summer to something or other. I should be able to handle a couple of phoebes. My nine-year-old daughter, Phoebe, names them, assigning sex arbitrarily: Luther for the smaller one, Avis for the larger. I concur on her guess as to their sexes, though I can’t say why. I settle into the summer routine: a trip to the pet store for a thousand crickets; another order of five thousand mealworms; some messing about with kitten chow and the microwave, and, most important, setting my internal clock to go off every half hour, dawn to dusk. The phoebes let me know when it’s time with a hungry chip note that sounds exactly like the alarm call of an adult. They huddle patiently in their Kleenex-lined box and wait to be fed. I paint their portraits each day, reveling in the luxury of having all the time I need to draw each new feather. All that changes on their seventeenth day, June 15.

  The birds are fully feathered now, and they spend most of their waking hours preening, removing feather sheaths, and ruffling and exercising their wings. Their droppings are no longer voided in a fecal sac but are small and loose, and much more frequent. Even their voices have changed: they’re giving a dry chiddick! I’ve never heard them make before. Like many other fledglings I’ve raised, they begin to refuse food. As many times as I’ve seen it, it still worries me. I tell myself that they’re slimming down for flight, that they’ll eat when they’re really hungry. It’s clear that they’re bright and healthy; a sick bird doesn’t preen its feathers.

  I can feel in my bones that these birds will be flying by the next morning. It’s time to put up the fledging tent. The best hundred dollars I ever spent: a fifteen-by-seventeen-foot nylon-screen tent, supported by jointed aluminum poles. It’s meant to keep mosquitoes off the picnic table, but it’s exactly what the bird doctor ordered for young songbirds trying their wings. It’s the most spacious and gentlest of cages. The fine, soft mesh contains them but can’t break their feathers. They can see the outdoors through the mesh sides, but a solid nylon roof protects them from the beating sun and rain. Best of all, the tent stores away in a box until I need it.

  The next two weeks are a blur to me. I keep a log because I know I won’t be able to remember the particulars of the birds’ development from day to day. The phoebes are growing, flying, learning new things every day. We establish a routine: I take them out to their fledging tent at dawn, pop into the tent to feed them every hour until dusk, and bring them back inside, locked in a pet tote, for the night. I put them in a dark stairwell so they won’t flutter and fuss; they hate to be put in the pet carrier. But raccoons and black rat snakes are relentles
s and ever vigilant, and as wonderful as the tent is, it offers no protection from predators. I caught a raccoon peering into the tent on June 21, in broad daylight. At night, after I remove the young birds, I leave the tent flaps wide open so the raccoons can come and go without tearing a hole through the mesh to gain access. It’s an open-door policy that removes the mystery for the ’coons and saves me money in the long run.

  On June 20, Day 22 of their short lives, they start to process their food, beating crickets against the perch. They get better at it every day. They aren’t able to knock the legs off the insects yet, but they will get there. On Day 23, Luther, the smaller, sweeter one, whirls out, grabs a housefly off the tent wall, brings it back to the perch, and releases it. Well, he’s getting the idea, anyway! Witnessing this small event, my heart sings. They’re acting like phoebes. They sit on high perches, bobbing their tails, sally out after nothing in particular or perhaps to peck at a moth, and then return to the perch. They’re flycatchers at last.

  Little things tell me their brains and neural connections are maturing. When a twenty-four-day-old bird grabs a moth from a forceps without gaping or needing to have it stuffed down its throat, that’s progress. It’s a developmental leap from being fed to feeding itself. Moths prove irresistible to these birds. They already know what they like. I mark each milestone like a mother charting her toddler’s progress in words spoken and steps taken. Like a mother? I am their mother.

  And I am confined like a prisoner to their schedule. Thank goodness they sleep all night, but they need to be fed every hour from dawn to dark. Because I have to take them everywhere with me in order to feed them, I try not to go anywhere. It’s too hot to leave them in the car, so I have to carry them in and out of stores and businesses in a small pet carrier, feeding them every hour or so, reaching under my lawn chair at the kids’ softball practices while managing the inevitable curious clutch of children and their questions. I have a week or more of hand-feeding them and taking them around with me until that magic day when they fly down and take their own crickets out of a dish. Until then, I do my grocery shopping while they’re still asleep, in the predawn dark, so I can get home in time to put them in the tent and feed them at sunrise. Grocery stores are weird places just before dawn. I am a weird person when I’m feeding baby birds.