The Doves must really like it.  You’ll see 3 Doves all together drinking and then splashing water on one another.  If you watch the video all the way to the end, you’ll see a pretty Bluejay who bathes in the stream several times per day.

I mentioned a few days ago that we have our first Eastern Bluebird nest.  Well the parents are still working on the nest, specifically the female.  She’ll carry this little pieces of grass or pine needles in her beak and take them into the nest.

This video (complete with my shaky hands since this camcorder is so old and doesn’t have Image Stabilization) shows the female Bluebird with her nesting material.  She flies back and forth (I show the male nearby briefly as well) before finally bringing the material into her nest.

Hopefully in another 5-7 days or so, we will have our first Bluebird eggs

After the Martins did a little bonding a few decided to explore the new gourd housing.  They appeared to enjoy perching on the new house, but were a little confused on how to enter as you’ll see in this video.

The stream is done.  I go back and forth about mortaring the rocks around the stream.  I need to touch up the area behind the stream, but it’s not visible when I’m taking pictures, so I haven’t rushed to complete that.  I need to add a couple more plants that can provide cover for the birds, but I haven’t quite decided what kind of plants I want to use.  Perhaps some tall native grass or something.

I always have to put up a fence around the stream, at least when I let the dogs out, otherwise they think it’s a giant litter box.  Both dogs would probably drink out of it if I let them.

The birds like the stream and they do use it.  I’ve seen them drinking water from the stream, as well as bathing.  As soon as the Spring migration starts, it will be interesting to see what types of birds the stream will attract.

I made a new video today just to try and share where I am at with this disappearing bird stream.  I start the video by my Lemon tree, then pan over to the Rose Garden, Bird Garden, then finish with the Purple Martin houses.

Speaking of Purple Martins, I received my new 12 room gourd house from Susan over at PurpleMartins-R-Us.  I finally got it all set up today, and you can see it towards the end of the video.  I’ll do a video and post about this new house tomorrow.

Shortly after I started recording, a Mourning Dove leisurely strolled back and forth in front of the birdcam and bird stream.

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