We Saved A Baby Bird

This post contains Affiliate Links.

     Thought I would share this interesting story with you. A few weeks ago, my husband came in and said, "A bird laid eggs in the fence post again." Zoey was excited, but I thought, "Oh, great. More dead baby birds!" (Yes, that is sarcasm..) 
     Every year, a momma bird lays eggs in the fence post of our yard. And every year, we end up with dead baby birds in our fence post. I can't understand why they do this every year! Does the momma bird not get that the babies never make it out of there? Sheesh! 
     Zoey runs out to look, and sure enough, there are cute baby birds looking up at her through the hole. Every day, she goes out to check on the baby birds. They are living and thriving. Cutest little fluffy baby birds ever. The whole time I'm thinking, "She will be heart broken AGAIN!" Yesterday, we are out walking the yard with her dad and she ran around the house to check on the baby birds. Suddenly, she is running back telling me "We HAVE to save it!" One of the baby birds died, and the other was sitting on top of it, crying out. The dead baby bird is already starting to smell very foul. Poor little guy! We must save him. 
     Now how on earth am I supposed to rescue a baby bird that is over a foot down this narrow pipe? Light bulb! I send Zoey into the house for a cup of wood chip bedding and a pair of tongs. (I know the tongs sound scary, but bear with me.) The tongs do not reach the baby bird at all. Slowly, I start to drop a small amount of wood chips into the side of the opening. The bird flutters about and is raised ever so slightly. (Pretty ingenious, right?) Drop a little more. Flutter a little more. Bird gets a little bit higher. Now, mind you, this is a very slow process. I don't want to bury the little thing in wood chips! Slowly but surely, it is working. I know it is strange to think the little birdie understood what was going on, but it sure seemed to. 
     When the bird was about 8 inches from the top, I lowered the tongs down into the pole. Guess what happened? The little bird perched on the end of the tongs and allowed me to raise him out of his little hole. Zoey cupped him lightly and put him into the cup we had the wood chips in! SAVED! 
     Poor thing was a bit funky from sitting a top of his dead room mate. Zoey decided he needed a little bath. She put a small amount of water into the bottom of the bathroom sink and let him splash around in it. Then, she lightly wrapped him in a towel. 
     As he dried, we wondered what kind of bird it was. We got on Google and searched for 'Black baby birds with a white ring around it's head.' Nothing really looked like the baby bird we had. Most of the babies that came up had grey under bellies and more white around them. Zoey remembered she had a bird book in her room. We looked at all the birds, the only one that looked remotely like it was a Chickadee. Alex had come out of his room to see what all the fuss was about. He read to us what the book said about a Chickadee bird. Zoey and I searched more info on the computer. Here is the book Zoey had. It is actually a pretty cool series. Not sure where she got it from but it was published in 1960 and it is called the Standard Treasury Of Learning. 

     While it did have a similar shape, our chick just did not have the same coloring. Or, it didn't until he fully dried. Look at the whitish feathers coming up on its chest and under belly. Our little rescued birdie WAS a Chickadee! 
     

And this Chickadee was not happy unless he was being held.   

     For about an hour, we wondered what the heck we were going to do with a baby bird. Zoey found a worm in the garden for it. He was not interested in it until she chopped the worm up. Gross. He ate a few bites though and we were grateful he was trying to eat! Still, what on Earth are we going to do now that we saved and cleaned him up? Mike suggested we put it out in the chicks cage. I was afraid they would attack the little guy though. 
     While I was sitting there, little birdie in my lap, talking to my husband about what we were going to do, IT FLEW! Not like a soaring eagle kind of flew, but an, "Oh, no! I don't know what I am doing but I am just going to go with it." kind of flew. That is when we realized, little birdie didn't need us anymore. We had rescued it from the fence post, bathed and fed him. He was already ready to go about the world and do his thing. 
     Zoey, her dad and I walked out to the corner bushes to let it go. The little bird chirped and cheepped frantically.  When we got to the corner bushes, I noticed the sound of another bird chirping and cheeping. Sure enough, what could possibly be the little birds mommy was darting with in the bushes. What luck! :D
     We placed him in the bushes and backed away. The mature bird came and flitted around the trees and bushes where our baby bird was at. It was time for us to say goodbye. Zoey was a little sad. She had hoped we could keep it a little longer. We walked away arm in arm. I told her how proud I am of her. She encouraged us to save a baby bird. She loves all animals and has a huge heart. I am so proud of the little woman she is becoming. 

Bye little birdie! Good luck, and try not to lay your babies in the fence post.. PLEASE! Ah heck, maybe we just need to get a cap for the post... 

Disclosure: I am Amazon Affiliate and may receive a small compensation for including links on my blog. Buying through my links is not necessary, just appreciated. Amazon does not charge extra for linked items recommended by their affiliates.  I only recommend products that I use and trust OR plan on using in the future. Please buy responsibly and do your own product research before buying anything online.

Save The Seeds!

"All the gardening knowledge in the world will be of no use, 
if you do not have seeds to sow." Kamay Flemens

     For years we have saved seed packets from various stores. Just recently choosing to buy heirlooms to grow and save. Heirlooms are seeds that have been grown, harvested, and saved from generation to generation. However, seeds bought in packets, do not last forever. My endless thoughts of 'what if there were no stores' prompted me to get serious about saving our own seeds from the garden. Because I believe in teaching and learning as a family, we researched how to save seeds, picked the best fruits, and harvested them together. (Although, my daughter actually did most of the seed harvesting for us. I assisted and took photos. :) )
     I heard once, when saving seeds, to use the best of the best. Best plant, best producer, best tasting fruits and vegetables. We did not harvest seeds from our mini plants because we never want mini plants again! We still have plenty of the cherry tomato seed packets, so we did not save those either. We also choose plants we knew we would eat or be able to use for trade or barter. There is no point saving seeds from plant varieties your family turns their noses up to unless you have another use for them. 
     Here is a bit of what we saved. Not everything was photographed...




Okra- Carefully split the okra length wise, being careful not to cut the tiny seed balls. Use your thumb to gently pop the seeds out. When finished, make sure all green plant material is removed. Set aside for a week or two to insure full dryness. I am interested to see if this worked. They looked nothing like what I used from my store bought seed packet. 

 They dried all wrinkly and I don't remember the seeds in the packet looking quite like that. This photo is before they dried fully. 

Field Pumpkins- Carve open pumpkin top and remove all seeds. Rinse seeds in a strainer and make sure all pumpkin pulp is removed.  They sat in the strainer for a few hours so that most of the water dripped away. Then, we placed the seeds on a plastic plate and moved them around often to insure even dryness and to keep them from sticking together. 

Cucumbers- While making pickles, we had tons and tons of seeds left in the bowl from cutting the cucumbers. My daughter just collected them from the bottom of the bowl and took out all the seeds that had been cut in half. She used a strainer to wash them and make sure there were no pieces of flesh with them. Just like the pumpkins, we let them stay in the strainer for a few hours to make sure the excess water had time to drip off. 

Jalapenos- Although we do not eat these much except for in salsa and for spicy pickles, we saved the seeds from some jalapenos we used for a FAIL at cheddar poppers. While we cored them, we dropped the seeds into a bowl. They dried in the bowl for a couple of weeks.

 (When harvesting seeds from any spicy pepper, please use gloves! USE THEM! The seeds and the core are spicier than the green flesh. Even though I washed my hands thoroughly, and my hands did not burn, everywhere I touched on my body after that BURNED LIKE WILD FIRE! I just so happened to be suffering from allergies and had itchy eyes. It was brutal! If you do happen to get burned by the oils in the jalapenos, milk helps. I used a washcloth to scrub my hands and face with the milk. Raw milk from any source is better. Raw sources include cows, goats and even humans. Yes, booby juice works too, or so I hear.. no booby juice around my house anymore.)

Cantalupe- A friend of mine brought a cantaloupe to me from her father's garden. It had a lovely texture and was sweet and juicy. After digging out the seeds from the center, I placed them in the strainer and washed all the goo away from them. They drip dried and were placed on a plate to finish the drying process.  

Bell Peppers- They have been a test this year. They were not as big as a store bought bell pepper. I am not a big fan of them, but I wanted to use them in salsa. I never got the chance. We did not have the tomatoes we needed at the time to make salsa with them. When we had tomatoes, I had already cut up the bell peppers to save seeds or had given them away. We did test eat them raw. It is not something my family enjoyed. They will be good for trading and bartering if needed. 

Tomatoes- Now this one I will go into more depth on in another post. They are a huge staple in my household and I believe we could nearly live off of them. My whole family loves tomatoes. Before we got serious in seed preservation and looked up how to save tomato seeds, we tried a couple of ways to dry the seeds. First, we took the seed pulp from a tomato we cut and placed them on paper towels. The seeds stuck to the paper towel as it dried and they were not very nice looking. I tested one to see if it would germinate, and it did. Then we brainstormed ideas on how to do it so they would come out cleaner.. but that is all in THIS  post. :)

     Now at this point, can you imagine what my kitchen looked like? There were plates, cups, bowls, and paper towels all over the place. It drove me nuts! I don't have very much room in our house. There is no pantry, laundry room, spare room at all to store all of the drying seed containers we had at this point. I finally got smart and gathered every small container we have and put all of them in a casserole pan. Safe, secured, compact storage! It took a few weeks to actually feel they were all sufficiently dry enough to store away.  We used a variety of different small recycled packages to store our seeds in. A variety, because, we couldn't eat enough Tic Tacs fast enough. We are all about FREEcyle! :D 

     Have you tried seed preservation? 

Save The Seeds!

     
More great seed saving advice and FREE PRINTABLE SEED PACKETS at 104 Homestead. 

For a great definition of heirlooms, hybrids, organics and all the other seed lingo, check out Underwood Gardens post. 

Want to start your own vault of survival gardening seeds without preserving them yourself?  Survival-Seed-Vault-
     

This post contains my Amazon affiliate link to a survival seed vault. Although, I have not ordered from them, it is something I would like to purchase in the future. If you happen to buy one, let me know what you think of it!