The Yellow Starlings's Open Salon Blog

Taking Flight

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:08:46 -0400

Something is wrong. I’ve flipped through my first bird journal three times now, but to no avail. How could that be? How could I possibly have been so negligent? Did I really fail to record what in hindsight seems perhaps the most significant milestone at this age: their first flight?

The only documentation I can find is the closing paragraph of a speech I wrote a week after Franny and Zooey joined our family. In this speech delivered by a colleague on my behalf, I explained why I couldn’t be present to join in honoring a friend who had done so much to help the vulnerable in our community—we were too busy caring for our own vulnerable creatures:

“Just one week later, the starlings’ adult feathers have come in, and they have begun to flap their wings. Already, they are able to stand without wobbling, run without tripping, and fly a short span across the room where we’ve set up a sanctuary. Not long from now, they will be even more independent and will be able to feed themselves, unassisted. Like the countless orphaned starlings Rosemary has nurtured over the years, they will soon be able to spread their wings, and take flight.”

What I do remember is how quickly the fledglings were growing up. Every day, more of their feathers were coming in, and they were beginning to exercise their new wings. At first, they didn’t have enough feathers or strength to become airborne. It was obvious this stage wouldn’t last long, however, and we realized they were on the verge of flying the coop—which at first was just a giant cardboard box with the top cut off.

We began researching cages for starlings. The Starling Talk website outlined the following criteria: “Store bought cages should have bar spacing of no wider than 1/2” or 5/8”. Very large cages are best for starlings, as they need room to fly!” We read elsewhere that the bars should be vertical to avoid damaging their wings, which could get caught in the criss-cross pattern of some styles of cages. On May 25, we ordered a black double flight cage, which we hoped would arrive before they actually started to fly.

During the weeklong interval before the cage’s arrival, the fledglings’ abbreviated hops graduated to long jumps. They would stand on the edge of the mattress that was propped against the wall and practice jumping onto Michael’s hand. Soon, their wing-flapping grew stronger and more graceful, and one day while I was at work, Franny and Zooey each made their first flight.

Such is the heartbreak of the working mother, and I now realize that is why this crucial moment is missing from my journal. When I got home that evening, I watched the birds stand on the window ledge, revving themselves up for flight. They would get a fierce look in their eyes as they concentrated on the target, summoning the strength to vault through the air to Michael’s waiting hand.

There was something so extraordinarily inspiring about that faithful leap. I wonder, how is it they knew how to do this? How is it they knew their wings were made for flapping, their feathers for flight? And what a humbling experience to watch these wild creatures fling themselves boldly into the air, expecting to be caught. Trusting their Daddy’s hand not to move. Alighting at their destination, they found it exactly as they had believed it would be.

As delighted as we were by this achievement and their growing confidence, we were dismayed to realize how much more trouble they could get into by flying about the room at will. We decided it might be safest to get a small, intermediary cage at a local pet store as we waited for the flight cages to arrive. On May 27, I recorded this cryptic note in my journal:

excursion downstairs

in the C

The “C” was the small cage, and I will never forget the terror they exhibited when we placed them in the cage and carried them downstairs. We draped a blanket over the cage to calm their frenzied flapping, but we could still hear their panicked breathing as they clung to the bars of the darkened cage. At the time, we felt it was necessary to remove them from the room—protected from Boland by the cage—so Michael could contend with the ant brigade that had recently marched into their room through the upstairs bathroom heater vent.

Under normal circumstances, Michael and I avoid killing all life forms, however small, and we have often adopted unconventional, nonviolent measures to rid our kitchen of invading ants or fruit flies. In this case, however, we felt an urgency to release the birds from their cage as soon as possible, and the only way we could see to remove the ants quickly was the dreaded vacuum cleaner. The only reason we didn’t let the ants alone in the first place is we worried they could bite and possibly harm the birds (we later learned the acid from ant bites can actually stunt pin feather growth). So we deluded ourselves into thinking that, perhaps, they could survive getting sucked into the vacuum’s chamber. Our delusions were soon proven as such. We still feel guilty about the legendary ant massacre of May 2006.

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, we gently carried the blanket-covered cage back up to the birds’ room. We removed the blanket and opened the cage door. They anxiously fled to freedom. That was the first and last time the birds ever spent time behind bars.

On June 6, 2006, I wrote a longer-than-usual entry about the arrival of the double flight cage, which was really two cages joined as one:

“The flight-c’s arrived yesterday. That’s what we’re calling them, so as not to alarm Franny & Zooey. I worry, though, that nearly three weeks of free reign in the back bedroom will make the C-A-G-E-S—however capacious—all the more agonizing. Franny, perhaps, will appreciate the sanctuary away from her bully brother (Zooey! I thought we taught you mutual respect, equality, and love! You’re supposed to support your sister—not step all over her and attempt to peck out her left eye!).”

By now, however, Franny and Zooey were already accustomed to their independence. Having witnessed the trauma they experienced when confined to a cage, we could never bring ourselves to subject them to that horror again. So instead, we set up their room as a giant aviary. We removed all potential hazards from the space, leaving a card table with their food and water and covering the floor with newspaper, blankets, towels, and tarps. Michael strung rope perches across the room and bird-proofed everything in sight. The flight cage remained unassembled in the hallway, while the birds flew freely about the room. Their domestic habitat was growing wilder by the day.

It wasn’t long before the birds’ territory expanded even further. They didn’t seem too happy with the idea of being locked into their room, so Michael turned one of his old 4x4’ paintings into a hinged door for the hallway. It served to keep Boland safely on the other side, while also giving Franny and Zooey a waystation for perching on their way to the bathroom, where we had installed full-spectrum UV lights and set up a splashing station for them. By the time we turned the second bedroom/storage room into a mealworm farm, the entire upstairs of our small apartment had gone to the birds. Yes, Franny and Zooey are spoiled. Blissfully so.

As I write this three years later, it’s hard to remember a time when flight was new to Franny and Zooey. They take flying jumps between the bedroom and bathroom so often—from shower rod to rope perch, hallway gate to food bowl—it’s strange to think of them incapable of scaling the tall sides of their first cardboard crib. They went from tucked in, partially feathered lumps to magnificently plumed birds fully capable of tucking their own selves in, thank-you-very-much. No more singsong lullabies for the fledglings, who are just as happy singing themselves to sleep. They still go through spells where they act like Mama’s and Daddy’s babies, flying after us if we head for the stairs before they’re done playing. Like this morning, when Zooey flew whirligigs over my head twice when I tried to leave the bathroom. So I returned, and we sang together, sunned, and even splashed a bit later with Franny. Although the birds are full-fledged adults now, they still enjoy spending time with their parents. It’s joyful to watch them become more independent with each passing day, still expressing love for us while freely, exuberantly, taking flight.

Note: This is Chapter 3 in an ongoing series. If you missed any of the previous chapters and would like to read more about our family of orphans, you can click on the appropriate links in the left-hand column.

A Room of Their Own

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:07:16 -0400

When you have never cared for beings so fragile you don’t know if they’ll last the night, you find yourself surprised by resilience. Not only had Franny and Zooey survived a thirty-foot tumble from their nest in the ceiling, but they had gone for several hours without food or water—not to mention the warmth of their mother’s wings enfolding their half-naked bodies. They had weathered our first day together, but we prepared ourselves for heartbreak as we tucked them in for what I would later learn was the most vulnerable period in a fledgling’s rescue: the first night.

The next morning, we anxiously climbed the stairs and tiptoed into their room. As we peered over the edge of their makeshift nest, Franny and Zooey gazed back at us, their bright beaks gaping.

Those early days together were full of firsts. On May 26, 2006, a little over a week after Franny and Zooey’s arrival, I noted:

first splashing

Such a small note for such a significant moment in their lives. Anyone who knows about starlings knows they love to splash. They get downright ecstatic. If only I had thought to videotape that first splashing. But then I wouldn’t have been fully present to savor that proud moment with them. Of course, now I can’t recall the moment in any degree of detail, so I still have regrets about not recording it. I now have to wonder how exuberant they were. Was it just a tentative dip of their beaks into the water? Was that the first drink they’d taken on their own? I suspect it was, as my journal entry from May 27 implies they didn’t actually hop into the water and engage in full, exclamation-point splashing until the next day:

first bath! (splash!)

It was a week before I finally persuaded Michael to let me take pictures of them. He worried the camera would scare them, but as fledglings they were less fazed by the introduction of a strange object than they would later be as adults. They hadn’t yet learned to be weary of newness. Most of the pictures I did take turned out rather poorly, since I was so self-conscious about traumatizing them and just caught a few snatches before guiltily putting the camera away.

Michael and I guessed from their respective sizes that Zooey was perhaps a day older than Franny. He was a tad larger and always a day or so ahead in his feathering. We never determined for certain how old they were when we first found them, but judging from this progression of photos at Starling Talk, I would put them at about nine or ten days old. They had most of their feathers in, but there was still quite a bit of pink flesh visible underneath, and you could see little pin feathers starting to poke through their delicate skin.

We also guessed that Zooey might be a male because he was both larger and more aggressive, while the petite Franny struck us as more female. Gender stereotypes, perhaps, but given how difficult it is to sex a starling, we went with our guesses for the time being, knowing we might need to amend our assumptions later on when the distinguishing signs became more pronounced.

Even after a week, the fledglings still relied on regular hand-feedings, although the intervals became further apart as they aged: from 20 minutes, to 30, to 45, and eventually, an hour. Because Michael works at home, he was able to attend to this relentless schedule of feedings during the day, while I took over the evening shift when I got home. On May 28, I wrote:

Mama on feeding duty

while Daddy takes a

long-needed nap . . .

We had read that whoever spends the most time feeding the fledglings during the imprinting phase is the one the birds will tend to bond with the most, so I worried they would develop a preference for Michael. Thankfully, Franny and Zooey were nondiscriminating, and they were just as delighted to balance on my arm while I stuck little globs of formula down their throats as they were on Michael’s.

Franny and Zooey quickly became integrated into our daily lives. In what we once thought a watertight schedule of work and nonstop creative projects, we were surprised to find pockets of time to feed, water, and play with the birds. Their habits were soon definining our own domestic routine. We woke with birdsong shortly after dawn, ascending the stairs to greet Franny and Zooey. The days were punctuated by feedings, waterings, Kleenex-changings, splashings, and playtimes. Since starlings are social birds, we tried to spend as much time as possible with them. We worried Boland would start to resent Franny and Zooey, but he proved astonishingly magnanimous.

Despite a decade of habituation to life as an only child, Boland joined us in welcoming his new feathered siblings into our home. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise given his equanimous and laidback personality, but Boland’s practice of chirruping at the birds behind our apartment meant complacency was no guarantee. At first, he displayed a modicum of curiosity as Michael and I disappeared behind closed doors for feedings. He would sometimes linger in the hallway quietly while we visited with the birds. And we did have to suffer a day-or-two–long meowing phase after he caught a glimpse of Franny and Zooey just as the door was closing behind us one time. That spell passed, though. He soon understood these new creatures were part of the family, and he resumed his standard cat duties with lackadaisical aplomb.

Boland didn’t even get jealous when Franny and Zooey got their own room. To protect the birds from their curious brother, we relinquished our bedroom that first night, moving the mattress downstairs to the livingroom/office area. Michael bricolaged a nestbox out of a giant cardboard box, and the birds slept in fledgling-sized wicker baskets in two corners of the box.

Each basket was lined with fluffed Kleenex, which we changed as regularly as diapers. Fortunately, fledglings have a habit of pooping outside the nest, so they generally deposited their self-contained sacs of urine (white) and poop (greenish-black) on the newspaper lining their box. On May 28, I noted in my journal:

Nighttime: the birdies have

outgrown their nests—

now blankies on the windowsill

We secured their window nests to avoid any more Jack and Jill tumbles. Franny and Zooey weren’t yet ready to fly, but they would be soon. For now, they were still toddlers, waiting to be tucked in with a bedtime lullaby. On May 26, I recorded the secret to sending the birds into a fast sleep:

drumming the starlings to sleep

We were just beginning to learn the importance of music in their lives. They had already begun to sing with an amazingly rich repetoire that seemed to expand daily. There was one piece in particular they liked to sing the most. Michael once said they were telling the story of how they came to be here. The long, descending whistle that sounds like a falling bomb is the part where they fell from their nests in the ceiling. He didn’t say this, but I think the gentle, hush-hush whispering is for when Michael would drum them to sleep with a paradiddle lullaby. And then there’s the chorus of screeching hallelujahs, ascending in volume with each repetition. When I asked Michael what that one meant, he said that was the part in the story when we opened our door to Franny and Zooey for the first time, and they realized, at last, they were home.

Note: This is Chapter 2 in an ongoing series. If you missed the first chapter and would like to read more about our family of orphans, you can do so here. Future chapters will be added to the list in the left-hand column as they become available.

When They Were Orphans

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:07:14 -0400

Orphans run in our family. Michael, my husband, was three months old when he became one. His mother’s heart exploded as the car she was riding in skated off an embankment on Christmas Eve. The only evidence he ever saw of his father was the photograph he once found hidden in a drawer—it showed his mother’s swollen, eggplant-colored face, the work of his father’s hand. His grandparents, griefstricken shells at the loss of their only child, made a passing effort at raising Michael. Then his grandmother died of a heart attack. He was nine.

After that, Michael lived with a series of families, some more dysfunctional than others. The most profound impression was made during his shortest stay—a two-week stint with Mrs. Love, a kind but firm black woman who welcomed the twelve-year–old Michael into her own family when a school counselor encouraged him to flee the abusive relationship his grandfather had married into.

There’s far more to that story, but this isn’t really about Michael—or me, for that matter. It’s about the creatures who came into our lives, unbidden, choosing us as their family when we had no intention of adopting. As much as we loved animals, we had decided to wait until we could afford our own home—which means we would have still been waiting to this day. We live in a book-stuffed, claustrophobically cluttered two-bedroom apartment with the hope of owning our own home as distant a possibility today as when we married seventeen years ago.

When the first orphan called to me, we were living in southern California. It was in the mid-nineties, and I was completing my college degree while working full-time in the English Department. One evening after work, I decided to walk down the road and intercept Michael on his way to pick me up.

That’s when one of the defining coincidences of our life occurred. I would usually sit on the steps under the wisteria, waiting for our little pickup to zip around the corner into the parking lot. That evening, however, I inexplicably decided to walk away from my office to catch Michael as he was driving in. And he inexplicably decided to take a different route to our meeting spot.

As dusk descended and the air grew crisp, I waited for Michael to arrive. And waited. While waiting, I started to hear a familiar sound, so faint I thought I might be imagining it. I became still, listening more intently.

“Mew . . . mew,” I heard. “Mew . . . meow . . . Meow, meow! . . . MEOW!”

I decided to walk in the direction of the cries. The meows grew more insistent as I approached the campus art gallery. The sound was louder, but I still saw no sign of a cat.

Suddenly, I looked up. “Meow, meow, MEOW, MEOW!” came excitedly from the wooden rafters. A long-haired kitten with a Santa Claus beard belly and fiery cinnamon-orange ears, back, and mustache dashed over to the edge of the rafters, gazing down at me. Our eyes locked. I stretched up my arm to him, unable to reach.

The rafters were eight, maybe ten feet high. I glanced around to find a way up. Climbing onto a round stone sculpture of a woman, I balanced myself on her back and leapt onto the railing that encircled the gallery entryway.

“Meow, meow!” the cat enthusiastically greeted me as I reached up and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. I tucked him firmly against my chest and hopped down to the concrete below.

“There you go!” I told the several-month–old cat, petting him as he curled around my legs, fixing his grateful eyes on mine. “All better. You can go home now.”

I started walking back toward my building. So did the cat. I stopped, pointed him in the opposite direction, and continued on. I glanced back. He was shadowing me again.

“It’s time to go home now,” I nudged him in the direction of the residences fringing the campus and started walking away more quickly. I looked back. He was trotting behind me. “You are stubborn, aren’t you?” I laughed.

By the time I reached my office, it was nearly dark. Michael, it turns out, had been waiting patiently the entire half-hour or so I had been waiting patiently to intercept him on the road. If I had waited for him on the steps like I usually did every evening, this cinnamon-and-white kitten could’ve been stuck on the rafters all night, and we never would have discovered this member of our beloved karass.

I ran up to the driver’s side of the car and told Michael what had happened. “He won’t stop following me. I think we might have to take him home,” I said.

We had both resisted the temptation to adopt a cat for years, and we worried taking this one with us would prevent him from finding his real home. Michael got out of the car and picked the cat up, walking him over to the lawn and away from the truck. He walked back to the truck, but before he could get in, he noticed the cat had run up behind him. Michael picked him up again and placed him even further away. He raced back and jumped behind the wheel, turning the ignition key. The lights flashed on. Before us, in the middle of the road, an orange-and-cream–colored kitten stood firm, unblinking in the gleaming headlights.

We both laughed. It seemed there was no other choice but to take him with us. I opened the car door and hopped out. He ran up to me and looked up adoringly. I picked him up, climbed into the passenger seat, and placed him on my lap. He immediately broke into a vibrant purr, curling into a ball as we started the fifteen–minute drive home.

Once home, we improvised a litterbox with some shredded newspaper in a box. This feisty, affectionate cat preferred more cushiony accommodations. That first night, he went poop on the papasan and pee on the couch. Michael and I didn’t mind. We had already fallen in love with this gift of purring sweetness.

Our hearts rended a little the next morning, when we knew we would have to seek out his original owners. I brought him to work in hopes that he would head home, but he just hung outside the French doors beside my office desk, gazing inside at me until I finally opened the doors. He ended up sleeping curled up on my lap as I worked, and later, I remembered peeking into the English Department chair’s office to see him curled up on the desk. I smiled.

Then it was time for the hard part. I put out a campus voicemail and then walked to all the neighbors’ houses, asking if they were missing a cat. With each new “No,” a little seed of hope began to blossom in my heart, as the chances of him having owners who were missing him grew thinner. I knew there had been litters of ferrel cats on the campus. He looked about seven, maybe eight months old. Perhaps he was a campus kitten.

It was Friday and time for the weekend. We decided to give him one last chance to return home. We placed some food on the porch outside my office just in case. Then we started home, worried to the point of heartbreak.

As we pulled into the parking lot on Monday morning, we found an exuberant cinnamon latté cat waiting outside the French doors. He zoomed up to us, thrilled his new parents had returned. He knew as well as we that he was coming home with us.

As the days passed and the chances of someone claiming him diminished, we began to grow more hopeful that this was a permanent adoption. We bought a proper litterbox, and Boland joined the family.

* * *

Eleven years later, I was working at a different academic institution, this time a university in the Pacific Northwest. Michael, Boland, and I had been living in Oregon for nearly seven years. We had found our way home.

One afternoon, I was walking through the auditorium down the hall from my office. I glanced down and noticed a small black lump on the floor. I froze, thinking it might be a bat, having just witnessed a bat flying up and down the hall a few weeks prior. Slowly, I moved toward the lump. It began waddling over to the first row of seats.

Taking a closer look, I soon realized it was a young bird, covered with a soft gray fuzz and not enough feathers to fly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another lump. Two gray fledglings tripped as they drew closer to one another, huddling under one of the auditorium seats. One soon wobbled off to hide under the overhead projection cart.

“How did you get in here?” I asked, glancing up at the decorative hole in the ceiling, where their nest appeared to be. It was fledgling season, and I could still hear chirping coming from thirty feet above. The ceilings were so high, the only way to reach them was to build scaffolding, which they had to do each summer during their annual painting and maintenance. But this was spring, and that wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t be able to return the baby birds to their nest.

That’s when I shifted into high-gear rescue mode. I raced down to my office to grab a box and perform a rapid Internet search. My colleagues—Greg, Stormy, and our intern Shannon—joined the flanks as I dashed back down the hall to gather them up. Greg, a graphic artist, described their beaks as “being possessed of a yellow racing stripe,” and we all admired them as the fledglings looked up at us wonderingly.

Stormy and Shannon stayed behind to watch over the birds, placing them in a Kleenex-lined box while I ran back to my office to make some phone calls. First, I tried the Biology Department, hoping to find someone on campus who could come to the birds’ rescue.

“Just put them in the bushes,” a lab aide advised me, saying that’s what the resident expert had told him to do in past cases. I got the same advice when I tried calling Physical Plant. Next, I called the Humane Society. They referred me to a local wildlife rescue hotline. I left a message.

Meanwhile, I would need to find something for them to eat. I wasn’t even sure what kind of birds they were. I guessed they might be sparrows and did a quick google for information on nursing baby sparrows back to health. One article recommended preparing a scrambled egg paste.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon. Where was I going to find scrambled eggs at this time of day? I called the dining hall and various food outlets on campus. The chef told me they were cranking on a catering project, but I was welcome to come use the kitchen to scramble an egg if I got desperate. I also tried calling some animal-loving friends I thought might be able to help, but a posse of kitties prevented one from helping while another lamented past failures at bird rescue before graciously declining. Phone call after phone call ended in disappointment. I left another message on the wildlife rescue hotline.

Five minutes later, a volunteer returned my call, asking me to describe the birds. “Do they have long, dark beaks, with some yellow in them?”

“Yeah, that sounds like them,” I said, relieved he had helped me identify them so easily.

“That means I can’t do anything to help. Starlings are a non-native invasive species, and state law prohibits us from rescuing them,” he explained.

Being relatively ignorant about the bird world until that afternoon, I didn’t even know what he meant by “non-native invasive species,” but it sounded like an awful stigma. Bad enough that the state had to introduce a law to prevent people from rescuing their helpless fledglings. Bad enough that someone committed to helping animals and birds would willingly relinquish them to their fate.

I was running out of options. Whatever happened, I knew I needed to find food for them. I hung up the phone and took to my feet, sprinting across campus to the student union, where I tracked down a half-day–old breakfast burrito.

On my way back from the union, I stopped in at the science building, where I swept through the labs in search of a sterile eyedropper. I caught two science professors in the hallway and urgently explained my need for a clean eyedropper. One of them led me to the supply room, where he provided me with one disposable and one glass eyedropper. Shouting back a thank-you, I sprinted back to my building, where I frantically concocted a scrambled egg glop before racing back down to the auditorium, where Stormy and Shannon were faithfully bird-sitting.

As soon as the fledglings saw the paste-filled eyedropper, they resurrected from their groggy state and started squawking, gaping for food. I couldn’t get the egg slop into the eyedropper fast enough. It was so lumpy, the paste kept clogging the eyedropper as the anxious beaks gaped impatiently before me. Sometimes, it would take so long to unclog, they’d start dozing off before I could finish, waking just as the refilled eyedropper neared their beaks. After several rounds of feedings, they collapsed in the box corners, their appetites finally sated.

I didn’t know at the time that feeding baby starlings with eyedroppers is a bad idea, since one squirt of liquid into their lungs could result in a serious respiratory infection, pneumonia even. Fortunately, the feedings every twenty to thirty minutes went smoothly, and the fledglings seemed perfectly content to devour their scrambled egg formula by eyedropper.

The day was drawing to a close, and I still hadn’t found anyone to rescue the birds. I thought the best I could hope to do was to give them hearty feedings and then find a safe haven for them outside, where they might be rescued by another starling family. Whatever gave me this desperately optimistic notion I don’t know, save for the unconscious avoidance of the moral terror that would result from relegating these orphans to a grim fate.

Greg told me he knew of a quiet, lovely spot on the west side of the building. I walked downstairs and out to the warm spring evening, both fledglings still resting in their box. I fooled myself into believing this must be the right thing to do, to put them back into nature, where they belong. I entrusted them to God, my heart rending as soon as I set them down in the flowerbed. They looked a little shivery, so I draped napkins over their fuzzy bodies and placed some egg mixture beside them, first administering a few eyedropper feedings. They appeared so lethargic, I was almost certain their fate was sealed, worrying they had already gone too long without food or water to recover from dehydration. Greg came out to see how they were doing. I could barely speak. We turned around and walked back into the building, tears streaming down my face as I trod heavily up the stairs, each one cutting into my heart as I wondered what to do.

I called Michael, my voice wobbling with a putrid mixture of guilt and heartbreak. “Is there any way to return them to their nest?” Michael asked.

“No, the ceilings are too high,” I explained. “And nobody’s willing to take them. Everyone just told me to put them out in the bushes. What should we do? I can’t just leave them out there,” I pleaded.

“Well, of course, we’ll just take them home!” Michael said matter-of-factly, as if the solution was so obvious. Why it had never even occurred to me that we could bring them into our apartment I don’t know, except I’m sure it had something to do with worrying about how Boland would react.

“We will?!” I cried, ecstatic with relief. I told him to get there as quickly as he could. As soon as Michael arrived, we headed down to the west side of the building with the birds’ box, lined with fresh, soft Kleenex.

On the way home, we stopped to pick up some baby bird hand-feeding formula at the co-op. Again, I would later learn this was far from ideal—the heavily corn-based diet would not provide the proper protein/fat balance required by starlings, especially developing ones. I’ve since learned that canned dog food—Natural Balance liver, for example—is a far healthier alternative.

But the birds were starving and eager to swallow whatever we put down their hatch. We kept up the feedings every twenty to thirty minutes, allowing them to rest quietly in between. We’d placed their box up in our bedroom, closing the door to prevent the curious Boland from entering. When off feeding duty, we’d race downstairs to research how to care for orphaned starlings.

The Starling Talk website was a godsend, and we soon discovered the rich subculture of starling-lovers out there. We learned the fledglings were in their imprinting phase, which meant they would come to view us as their parents if we continued feeding and caring for them. Research ultimately suggested that releasing them at this stage of their development would put them at risk of almost certain death. Having not yet been taught to forage, they would be unable to feed themselves. They were too young to fly and join another flock of starlings. They were quite helpless, and Michael and I naïvely accepted the awesome responsibility of caring for them.

Hailing from the mynah family, starlings possess an exceptional intelligence and can even learn to talk, as books like Arnie the Darling Starling poignantly reveal. Because starlings are a non-native invasive species, a permit is not required for adoption of this wild bird. Some people even intentionally capture fallen fledglings during their imprinting phase, since their highly social demeanor and intelligence make them wonderful avian companions.

That first night, we were still so ignorant, we weren’t even sure if starlings slept through the night, or if we needed to continue feeding them. Snatching cat naps in between more distanced feedings, we woke the birds several times during the night to offer them food. They swallowed it greedily, but we now realize it probably would’ve been better to just let them sleep through the night.

Those first couple of days were a marathon of feedings, research, and practically round-the-clock care. We placed a hot-water bottle under a cushion of Kleenexes in their little nest-box, making sure they would be warm enough through the night, since they didn’t have all of their feathers in to protect them from the cold.

On May 18, 2006, I made my first bird journal entry:

Sitting with the Starlings

Franny and Zooey

Five days later, I made these notes:

Zooey, then Franny

     first hop, perch, jump

     onto edge of bin

     then to Michael’s hand

     & again . . .

     Coming home, feeding time

     Zooey hops to edge,

          into my hand.

     Feeds, falls asleep against

my breast.

Every morning, we awoke to the grace of these tiny bundles of life, gaping their racing-striped beaks and calling for us to feed them, to nurture them. There was no question about their belonging. Our family of orphans had expanded to embrace two more.

Note: This is the first chapter in an ongoing series. New chapters will be added to the left-hand column if you wish to continue reading.