Apparently our house is becoming an aviary - outside and in! Last weekend, while sitting in the living room with Will, I heard a fluttering sound in our chimney, and it soon became apparent that a bird had fallen down in it. We have a little gas fireplace; the flue is blocked with a metal plate, so I naively hoped that the bird would just find his way out. After spending some time out in the backyard, I came back inside with Will, only to find that the metal plate does not completely block the chimney, as a red-headed woodpecker was flying around our living room!
What ensued was a brief but intense battle of me trying to sweep him out the front door with a broom while Beth held the door open. But the woodpecker kept lingering in the house and flying from room to room. After he fell behind the piano, Beth joined me and together we pinned him against a window underneath a serving bowl cover.
You can see on the sides of the bowl some smears of blood. We think he ran into the ceiling fan at one point and nicked his wing, so everywhere he flew he left little smears of blood (gross, but I cleaned it up). But when we let him go, he flew away just fine, so it wasn't that bad.
Will was a little freaked out at seeing the bird (and such a big one!) in the house, and for the rest of the day he kept asking, "Where is he?" and looking around at the ceiling. We tried to defuse things, though, by showing him the bird after we caught him (and took the above pictures) and tried to keep light-hearted about it. Overall, just another bird adventure in the Dekker household!
The nest in our ferns is now chirping with baby birds! This makes Brood #2 hatched on our porch.
Every 10 minutes or so, the birds will go nuts with chirping as their parents swoop in to feed them.
Whenever he hears them, Will wants to go out on the porch to see them. Here I found him sitting in the rocking chair just watching the birds.
Apparently our house is becoming an aviary - outside and in! Last weekend, while sitting in the living room with Will, I heard a fluttering sound in our chimney, and it soon became apparent that a bird had fallen down in it. We have a little gas fireplace; the flue is blocked with a metal plate, so I naively hoped that the bird would just find his way out. After spending some time out in the backyard, I came back inside with Will, only to find that the metal plate does not completely block the chimney, as a red-headed woodpecker was flying around our living room!
What ensued was a brief but intense battle of me trying to sweep him out the front door with a broom while Beth held the door open. But the woodpecker kept lingering in the house and flying from room to room. After he fell behind the piano, Beth joined me and together we pinned him against a window underneath a serving bowl cover.
You can see on the sides of the bowl some smears of blood. We think he ran into the ceiling fan at one point and nicked his wing, so everywhere he flew he left little smears of blood (gross, but I cleaned it up). But when we let him go, he flew away just fine, so it wasn't that bad.