Bird in the garage

Some of you may or may not know we have Chimney Swifts nesting in our chimney. Each spring they arrive and we can hear them fluttering their winds against the damper of our fireplace, and then a few short weeks later we hear the twittering of baby birds begging for bugs from their parents.

This morning as Will was taking Heidi to preschool, she discovered a BIRD!!! Flying around the garage. She was so excited she yelled a BIRD!! a Bird!! A Bird!! Over and over again. She then ran through the house calling for me, “Mommy a bird in the garage! Come see!” she could hardly contain her excitement and I could not get to the garage fast enough to satisfy her.

She showed it to me. it was now on the window of the garage, these kinds of birds can not land like regular birds because of the positioning of their feet; they are specially designed to cling to the walls of caves. So it was clinging to the metal bar on the window,

Ever so often it would try and fly and it would circle the garage and then try to land if it missed it fluttered helplessly on the cabinet in front of the window until it could get into the right position to fly again. (They look so helpless)

We had Heidi get into the van so that she would not be in the way as we tried to catch the bird, she provided us with running commentary the entire time, “its flying….It’s in the window….Its over here…”

Forest our cat had been out in the front of the house and he had been attracted by the bird’s attempts to get out the window and so now he was perched outside wanting to catch it.

(Sorry this photo did not work but he looked very frustrated with the glass separating him from his pray!!) YUMMY

After only a few attempts Will was victorious and captured the little thing and we let it go.

We have some practice at catching Chimney Swifts because of the way our chimney is, there are two flues one leads to the fireplace in the living room and the other goes down to where the oil heater use to be that heated our home in the olden days. LOL . Well the chimney for the fireplace is rough so the birds can cling to the sides of it but the one that comes down the other side is smooth thus giving noting for the bird to grab onto; so if the bird flies down the wrong side it is trapped.

The first time we had this happen I was in the garage and I could hear some fluttering and chirping sounds coming from the hole in the wall I got out a latter and looked in but I could not see anything. I noticed that the chimney continued down past were the opening came out into the garage so I went and got a mirror and used that to look down the hole.
I found to my surprise a bird trapped down there. The way the chimney is made created a trap. Once the bird flew down the flue it needed to land to get its bearings to fly back out but because of the smooth sides it couldn't do this; the birds came down that side but there was no way for it to get out. In fact I could see the remains of a number of other birds that had at one time or another fallen down and died. Well I got some gloves and was able to reach down and pull the poor thing out. We then stuffed news papers into the hole so that if any other birds fell down they would then be able to fly into the garage and we could let them go.

Each year we get at least one, I think it must be a newbie because after that first mishap we don’t get any more. I think they tell the other birds don’t go down that side.

We have had people tell us to cover the chimney so they can’t nest there any more. We don’t want to do that these little beauties eat their weight every day in misquotes! And with us living in the DeLand of misquotes we need all the help we can get.


All’s well that ends well.