Children Are Stressful

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.