Silly Birds of Spring

It's spring in Sydney! How can we tell? What changes? Honestly, not much to the untrained eye. Slightly warmer days on average, and slightly milder nights. The jasmine is in full bloom, making sensitive eyes water and noses tickle. And perhaps least noticeably, the birds are having offspring. 

I noticed the birds because of an experience in March, with a Masked Lapwing chick in an overflow grate and a very protective and distressed parent bird who was not pleased when I tried to lift the grate to scoop the baby bird out. Having rescued the chick from the grate at extreme personal risk, I felt committed to its well-being, and watched as the parents - both now - coaxed the walking chick down our street, across the road, and up the next street, on their way to a major intersection that they would need to navigate - on foot - to get into Sydney Park. I called WIRES for support - there was no way they'd get across safely - and a volunteer came and put the chick in a box and used it to lure the parents, flying, safely through the intersection and into the park. I can summarise this event in one quick paragraph, but in fact this was an entire afternoon of my life, watching the chick, helping it across one road, scooping up a neighbourhood cat, Saxon, and dropping him over the fence, and so on.

Plover chicks! So cute and fluffy - and dumb as bricks

I was prepared, this year, when I heard the Lapwing parents back in the neighbourhood. They make a distinctive and not very pretty sound, like 'Ke-ke-ke-ke!' while circling overhead. They don't really build nests, but scratch together a little pile of twigs or something handy on flat ground - or flat roofs, which is why they are near our house. This particular pair nests on the flat roof of the apartment building next door. Silly birds! The chicks leave the nest as soon as they hatch, so they don't wait until they can fly. They just get up and start pecking around on the ground/roof. The problem for this family is that the chicks have to get to the ground - and it's a long drop of about 4 stories.

I was watching, knowing the chicks were going to be coming off the roof, and knowing that the parents were going to try to walk down the street with them again, and feeling the weight of this knowledge as a kind of responsibility. I had my eye on them. And then one day last week, I saw a little fuzzy head bobbing around in the eaves troughs of the apartments. It was The Day. 

Both chicks looking alert!

A little later, Drew and I were going to get coffees, and I looked down the side of the building. There, crumpled on the ground, was a chick. I picked it up and as I did, it started breathing a bit, and slowly it came-to and tried lifting its head. I got a shoe box and put it inside. Then, I waited for the other chick. I wanted to try to catch it before it could hit the ground, but in the end, I was standing too far away. The parent was with the chick that had already come down off the roof, and was aggressively trying to keep me away from the shoe box. I saw the other chick fling itself off the roof, stumpy little wings and long legs stuck straight out, and smack fully into the concrete. Unbelievably, it also lived. I put it in the shoe box, and after a bit of faffing around and seeing if a WIRES volunteer could come to help me (they couldn't - overwhelmed with calls), I lured the parents with the chicks in the shoe box over to the grassy stretch of land beside at the end of the road, where the chicks could be safer. 

The parents are scary because they've got those spurs on their wings
and they're definitely ready to cut a b*tch.

I don't know how they're doing because of course they've moved on, but I hope the chicks are OK. One of them looked like it was doing better than the other, but with the parents there and all of them in a safe place away from cars and cats, I think I gave them a bit of a head start. Just every now and then I hear one of the parents yelling 'ke-ke-ke-ke!'

And the back yard is instead full of the sound of our resident Noisy Miners and their chicks. Miners also leave the nest really early, and learn to fly as they go along. The chicks are fluffy grey round things with pointy yellow beaks and very stubby tails - their tail and flight feathers haven't grown in yet. There are two chicks and two parents, and the chicks sit in trees (often the tree right outside my office window) and yell 'Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!' all. dang. day.