This morning quite early (4:00 a.m.) I put Quincy outside to do his business. He knows that barking is frowned on. My neighbors work odd hours and sleep during the day and he doesn’t always bark anyway. But this morning, I heard him yipping excitedly. I turned on the outside light and saw him running circles around a mass in the grass. I had such a bad feeling and flew out the door to see what he had found.

Turns out, it was a fledging, a flicker. It was under the walnut tree and unable to fly. How it avoided detection from 12 outside sanctuary cats and was found by this goofy dog is beyond me. But I grabbed a towel and a carrier and brought it inside.

Using a brand new artists paintbrush and painting its beak with water, I was able to give it a drink. He could hop, spread his wings but he couldn’t fly. I called the wildlife sanctuary when they opened and I was told that I needed to put him back in the walnut tree (as high as I possibly could!) I explained to the person that I ran a cat sanctuary and putting this baby back in the tree was a really bad idea. I was told that they didn’t want to “split up the family” and the baby had better chances with the parents then with their assistance. I wonder if it had been a owl, a perrigrine falcon or an eagle if I would have been told the same thing. I was told “Put it in the tree and if it falls out again, bring it to us.” I told them IF this baby did fall out of the tree it was going to end up in some cat’s lunchbox. I have several good hunters here. Didn’t matter, they still told me to put the bird in the tree.

I waited until a friend got here and was feeding the outside cats for distraction before I put the baby bird back in the tree. I used a boat hook to encourage it to climb higher than I could climb and it was snug up between two limbs.

I climbed down, said a prayer and walked away. Before I got very far, for whatever reason it started squawking and hopping around. I did not see any parents flying in- what I did see is Bentley streaking up the tree- grabbing the baby bird and jumping down to the ground. By the time I followed Bent, he had already done what nature programmed him to do and the bird had been quickly dispatched.

I wish it had gone differently but I had a feeling that this baby’s days were numbered from the beginning-

Here it is after Quincy found it in the grass