Glad To See Them Come and Glad To See Them Leave

[litedave]

The last of my babies fledged out today. finally. I know that mom and pop worked hard for a long time feeding, protecting and caring for them.
I am so happy when they arrive here in February every year. I am equally as happy to see them all get out of the nest and go their own way. The stress for me as a landlord for these birds gets pretty high. Routine walk arounds and nest checks as well as monitoring their activities everyday is a labor of love.
It was just this last Saturday that I caught a rat snake inside the last nest ready to fledge. I had been taking a afternoon nap and just got up and looked out the window and saw the horrid sight of a tail sticking out of one of the openings. I brought the house down and grabed his tail, yanked him out and hurled him to the ground and off he slivered into one of our gardens. I immediately checked the 4 babies who were just days from fledging and found that they were all still warm and ok. I guess he had not been there for very long and was probably looking for eggs as the birds were way too big for his mouth. He was about a 2 foot long snake. This was another first for me as I have never had this happen in years past. Now, I am reading up on putting together a netting type of trap for the base of the pole to deter this from happening again. Yes, it's stressful and I was so glad to see them all fledged out this afternoon. I have done my job. Now, it's up to Mother Nature.

[John Pearson]

I have baffles on att my poles so nothing (hopefully)gets up from the ground. A lot of folks in our club use netting for snakes.