Cloudy with a chance of... fledglings

There are many nice things about summer, though extreme heat is not one of them. The other thing I have very mixed feelings about are baby birds. They are sweet when you hear them peeping and can see their little heads stick up over the side of the nest. If only they would stay in their nests. 

We have a lot of sparrow nests in our barn. Here are a few of them.

There are many more nests than these as well. What these pictures don't convey is high high up in the air these nests are. 

These pictures help give perspective. They are really up there. 

Inevitably in late spring and early summer, I will find the occasional little nestling on the ground. More often than not they don't survive the fall and this is sad. Sometimes they do and we (J.) end up on a tall extension ladder to put the baby bird back in its nest. I have no idea if any of these renested birds survive, but it makes us feel better. 

Then summer comes and the little birds grow feathers. It is more distressing when one of these falls out of the nest prematurely. Last week we (J., though K. climbed up once) the same baby bird back in twice. At least I think it was the same; it's impossible to tell. 

The final stage is when I go to the barn to find a fledgling on the ground. This happened the other day. I was feeding horses and one of the food pans had been flipped and stomped on so that it was a bit inside out. I pulled it towards me and lifted it up to turn it right side out when a bird scuttled away from underneath. This was surprising, but my brain just assumed it was an adult bird and I went back to my task. Looking back I should have realized something was odd that the bird ran away instead of flying away. Later, as I was mucking, I noticed a small brown something in the corner of the barn I was working in and made a mental note to go back and get that bit into the wheelbarrow. Well, when I got back to it, I realized it was actually a small bird hiding out in the corner. 

I'm pretty sure it was the one hiding under the food pan and was then hiding in the stall corner. I threw some of Fluffy's food to it because I had no idea when it last ate and left it alone. I have learned that fledglings take a bit to sort things out once they're out of the nest, but then fly away. After I had finished the next stall I went back to check and this is exactly what this one had done. It's emotionally exhausting worrying about all these little baby birds plummetting from the sky, I tell you.

And one last thing to share this evening. Last week P. and D. drove out to Seattle so they could attend one of the H-S Family children's wedding. We wish we could all have gone, but it just wasn't feasible. One of the best pictures they shared with us was this one.

This trio have been friends a very long time. That's a H-S Family child on the left (and also the groom), P., then a P. Family child on the right. We have a picture of these three in just about the same pose and the mothers present coerced them into recreating it. It makes me smile every time I see it.

I couldn't locate the original to share with you, but take a look at this one. (If you want to read the post this picture goes with it's The Battle of Antietam.)

These three are numbers 8, 9, and 10 from the left, just after little TM. This picture is from 2009 and doesn't really feel as though it was all that long ago.