Below is a video that I recorded today of Leecy gluing some Monarch Chrysalises to a piece of cardboard.  We tend to do this during Winter months when we still have Caterpillars and Chrysalises and want to protect them from inclement weather (rainy, cold).

To give you a brief verbal summary:  We try and keep the Monarch Caterpillars outside as much as possible unless the temperature is expected to be a little chilly or we are going to have excessive rain.  We’ll gently detach the Monarch Chrysalis from the outdoor enclosure, then bring it inside.  From there, we (Leecy) uses a glue gun to glue the tip of the Chrysalis to a piece of cardboard so that it can continue to develop.  We then flip the cardboard upside down and place it over a container.

Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

By the way, we have about 36 Monarch Butterfly Chrysalises right now (December 23, 2011)

Hi! Well, yes I was on “Butterfly watch” today. I actually captured and tagged 8 monarchs. 1 was from the chrysalis we had in the house that we tried our 1st attempt with hot glue. All but 1 were females today. I would go let the dogs outside and take the butterfly net and tag kit and my camera with me each time. The first time I tagged 1 Monarch. Then next was 3 more, then the one from inside the house, and then about 3pm the last 4, and that’s when I recorded the video to show L how many were fluttering around. I really love how gentle and carefree the Monarchs float in the air. If you can hear in the video, I said at the time of the recording there were 7  fluttering around this Zinnia patch. Some were tagged already, but about 4 weren’t. Of course I couldn’t catch those to tag them today. ~a

Fall Migration 2011 Monarch Butterfly On Orange Zinnia

Below is an awesome video that Leecy took showing just how many Monarchs were going nuts of the Zinnias.

This is the second male I have seen.  He’s obviously competing with the Honeybees

Male Ruby Throated Hummingbird Flying Towards Feeder With Honeybees

I also took a brief video, and I got really lucky in the quality and how it captured his wings.  If you click in the bottom right hand corner you can watch it in full screen mode to see his tongue darting in and out.

First a few distance shots.  Here’s Sascha the German Shepherd trying out her new Ruffwear Doggie Life Jacket.  The reason I got Sascha a Life Jacket is because at the recent trip to the vet he said she’s starting to develop a little arthritis.  On top of that, Sascha swims like a crazy person.

Sascha Trying On Her New Ruffwear Doggie Life Jacket

Then it was time to bring the camera a little closer to the pool.

Here’s Maggie getting her closeup shot

Maggie Out Of The Pool Face Closeup

Then Sascha needs her turn.

Sascha Out Of The Pool Face Closeup With Toy

So far so good for a little hand held camera.  Now the real test.  Underwater.  I combined a few video clips taken from this camera.

Notice how Maggie swims, all relaxed, calm, like she’s just floating on the water.  On the other hand, Sascha doesn’t know how to do anything slow and relaxed.

Overall, I think Leecy will have fun with her camera when she takes her trip to the Galapagos.

I guess today is day 2 of my attempt to rescue/rehab this baby Purple Martin.  I’m calling him “Lil Buddy.” I’ll share with you the full story and intersperse it with pictures and video.

I decided to try a new angle for shooting pictures and video by heading upstairs and shooting out of the bedroom window.  It offers a direct view of the Purple Martin house.  To my neighbors, it also may look like I’m Lee Harvey Oswald in the window with a big camera lens.

My intention was to take a few shots of “Lil Buddy” and show some of the remaining members of the colony.

At first, Lil Buddy was by himself calling for the adults to feed him.

Finally a short time later, the rest of the colony came by the Martin house.  I’m sure the colony is pleading with Lil Buddy to hurry up and fly as they need to begin their migration.

After this it gets interesting.  It’s pretty obvious that Lil Buddy is dehydrated and underweight.  Once the colony had left for the day I took down the Martin house by myself, which is no easy feat.  I then get Lil Buddy from his nest.

Before I go further, I have to again thank Susan over at My Purple Martin who has been offering me advice on trying to save Lil Buddy.

Moving on, I had been soaking some meal worms (turns out they were Wax Worms) in Gatorade for feeding.  I had a feeling this was going to be tough.  Sure, I’ve hand fed Coco, our African Grey Parrot, but I’ve never attempted to feed a wild bird (unlike Leecy who had volunteered at the Texas Wildlife Rehab Coalition last year feeding baby birds).

The first thing I do is to gently pry open Lil Buddy’s beak, again a challenge because I have no fingernails.  Once I get his beak open, I inserted a Wax Worm deep in his throat, but on the side of his tongue.  Gulp!  He gets it.  I do that time after time for about 10 Wax Worms and Lil Buddy appears to be full.

Since he was being so calm and compliant (and hopefully appreciative) I decided to try a risky move.  I went inside to grab our digital bird scale.  I wasn’t confident that he would stay still long enough to be weighed, but I wanted to try to see exactly how underweight he may be.  Once again Lil Buddy surprised me and allowed me to place him on the scale.  He weighed 36 grams.  Compare that to Coco who is around 420 grams.  Susan had mentioned to me that he should probably be around 46 grams, so he’s clearly underweight.

I continue to feed Lil Buddy 3 more times throughout the day.  I had Leecy pick up some meal worms since I’m not even sure what Wax Worms are.  Each time, Lil Buddy eats less and less, and he certainly appears to be getting full.

For the final feeding, and since Leecy was home, she wanted to take a couple of pictures and a short video.

Lil Buddy is becoming tolerant of this human intrusion.  He would sit on my finger, without me holding him.

Purple Martin Sitting On Finger

Here’s a close up picture of Lil Buddy on my finger.

Closeup Of Purple Martin Sitting On Finger

Then it’s time to place Lil Buddy back in his nest for the evening.  I wanted to see if he would at least make a small attempt at flying, but going from my finger to his house.  You can tell from the video, he surprised me a little bit.

After I retrieved Lil Buddy, I placed him back in the nest.  I’ll be anxious to see how he does tomorrow with the colony (at least I hope the colony returns).

In our Colony, we had one nest with 4 babies, and one nest with a near fledgling (with the bird we called Berry).

In the past week and a half or so, we’ve only seen 3-4 adults tending to the babies and near fledgling.  This morning, there were lots of Purple Martins hanging around the Colony.  I have a brief video showing the number of Purple Martins hanging around the house this morning.  The bird you hear whistling is our African Grey in the background.  Towards the end of this first video, Berry, the near fledgling Purple Martin had jumped out of the nest once again.  It still couldn’t fly.

In this next video, we again rescued Berry since it was just flopping around in the grass.  This bird appeared to have problems with its coordination.  You can see that as it tries to balance on Leecy’s finger.

Now the bad news.  I had a weird feeling about all these Purple Martins that were hanging around the house.  I’m not sure if they were juveniles or adults, but I thought it strange that I hadn’t seen this many in the colony in a few weeks.

I mentioned to Leecy we should do another nest check this evening.  We found out Berry had died (no injuries that I could see).  I also smelled a bad smell coming from the housing.  When we checked the nest with 4 babies, 2 were dead, 1 was missing, and only 1 remained.  The two babies that were dead looked like they might have been attacked by something, although I haven’t seen any predators around.

Any ideas what may have happened?

What should I do?  It’s only supposed to get down to 79 degrees tonight, so I’m guessing it will be warm enough for him (especially since it was 105 degrees earlier today) throughout the evening.  What about tomorrow?  Again, I’m just assuming, but I would like to think that the male Cardinal can still feed him, although both parents have been previously sharing that duty.

How long can these baby birds survive without one of parents feeding them?  When do I make the determination about whether or not to take him to a wildlife rehabber?  It’s supposed to be 100 degrees again tomorrow so I know he will be hot. We wouldn’t be able to get him to a rehabber until late tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks for any advice anyone can offer.

By the way, Melvin is only 7 days old so he is likely too young to be a fledgling.

Here’s a video of Melvin tonight, alone in his nest.

As I’ve mentioned in the my last few posts about Melvin, his father is taking a very active role in his feeding.

Here’s Papa Cardinal bringing in some food for Melvin.  It looks like he has some kind of worm in his beak.

Papa Cardinal Sitting On Pool Rock Looking At Nest

Once I moved away from the nest, Papa brought the worm to Melvin.

If you look closely you can see Melvin’s eyes just beginning to open.

Later Papa kept watch on the nest while I was watering the garden.

Papa Cardinal Chirping On Perch WIth Shadow In Background

The video is about 10 minutes long and I find it quite interesting to watch.  Both parents bring this huge piece of whatever it is to “Melvin.”  Mama’s piece of food was reasonable, and Melvin gobbled it right up.  Papa’s piece of food was huge, and “Melvin” struggled to swallow it.  I think Papa got a little frustrated with “Melvin’s” inability to swallow the food, so he gave it to Mama and it took her a few tries to finally get “Melvin” to eat the whole thing.  You’ll notice that the second egg still hasn’t hatched.  Leecy checked it today, and the egg doesn’t have any cracks, so perhaps it will still hatch soon.  The eggs were originally laid within one day of one another, but this second one is taking a while to hatch.

Before all of this happened, I noticed Papa watching me check out “Melvin’s” nest.  At first I don’t think he was too thrilled I was so close to the nest, but after a while he calmed down.

Papa Cardinal Worried I'm Bothering His Baby

If anyone has any guesses as to what that giant piece of food is they are trying to feed “Melvin” I’d love to hear what you think!

The overriding theme for the Purple Martins early in the morning is to stretch their wings, yawn, do a little singing, preen, and listen to the babies still in the nest squawk about how hungry they are.

Just like I would do, the first thing you do to start the day is yawn.

Purple Martin Yawning In The Morning

After the morning yawn and a few wing stretches it’s time for the family to begin preening their wings.

Then you start bonding with the family by doing a little singing, and ignoring their sibling who hasn’t fledged the nest.

Colony Of Purple Martins Enjoying Morning Sun

When the baby realizes that the sad stare “because I’m hungry” doesn’t work, it starts to squawk for food.  Unfortunately for the baby, this is their brother who just left the nest a couple of days ago and is still learning how to hunt for its own food, much less food for its sibling.

Baby Purple Martin Begging Sibling For Food

Just like a human family, the mother had enough of the squawking and flew out to get some food.

Purple Martin Mother Feeding Her Young

Once that baby quieted down, another mother went out and actually found a Dragonfly for her babies.

Female Purple Martin Finally Caught A Dragonfly For Babies

While some of the parents went out to search for food for their babies, others decided to spend some additional time bonding.

Brother And Sister Purple Martins Sitting Together

And that’s the way the world turns early in the morning for this Purple Martin colony.  I’m not sure what they’ll be doing the rest of the day, but I will do a nest check tonight to see how everyone is doing after the high temperatures we’re expecting today.

Even the birds are getting really hot today and are starting to pant even though it’s still early in the morning.

Here’s one of the new fledglings from nest one, and he was already starting to pant at 9 am this morning.

Fledgling Male Purple Martin Panting In The Heat

When I turned on the BirdCam to check on momma Cardinal and her nest of 2 eggs, even she was already panting.

I got lucky this year (or the Cardinal felt sorry for me) in that the nest is in our Gardenia shrub, which means I don’t have to climb a ladder to look at the nest, and I was able to position my small BirdCam without too much trouble.

I recorded a 10 minute or so video with the BirdCam.  If the first part of the video you can see the two eggs, then later you can hear mama Cardinal start chirping before she appears in the nest.  At around the 8 minute mark, mama repositions her eggs.

The good part about the placement of this BirdCam is it should provide some really good video once the babies are born.  The not so great part is that the camera is positioned fairly close to the nest to you can’t always see the mother in full view.

One of the Anoles was a bit smaller, but more often than not, it would be winning the fight.

Male Anoles Fighting In Mouth Lock

They would get in this mouth lock, then start flinging each other back and forth.

These guys were bleeding from their mouths.  I gave up watching them after 2 hours.  I was curious if one of them would kill the other one, but when I checked on them after 2 hours I didn’t see either one of them.  I had no idea these guys would be so territorial.  I realize there would be fights for dominance, but couldn’t believe they would literally fight for 2+ hours.  They had to be exhausted whenever they finished.

Green Anole Males Bleeding From Mouth