Yesterday morning there was a very loud crow cawing in the midst of a lot of bird yelling and flapping out front. We ran to the front yard to see what all the commotion was about. A solitary black crow was swooping through the oak limbs, being dive bombed furiously from behind by a flock of Baltimore Orioles. I assumed there were predator/nest issues at stake, and within a moment a baby bird fell from the tree and landed on our driveway. Immediatly the females began swooping down desperately to check on it. We gingerly removed it from the blacktop in the sun to a shady flowerbed using a garden trowel and a fern frond, so as not to touch it with our hands, for fear of leaving our scent and causing the parents to abandon it. There were some disturbed feathers on the back of its neck and possible blood on its throad. Maybe the bad ol' crow had gotten its beak on the baby before flying off. And just maybe the mommie Oriole had pushed the poor thing out since it was injured. This I don't know. However, the nasty crow flew away and I've been keeping Pooie in the house since, because she, the little huntress, loves nothing more than a good meal of fresh baby bird. This morning she did escape to the patio, and I was alerted to this by lots of noisy bird-scolding. So I popped Pooie back in the house, but first managed to snap this shot of a Mama Oriole sitting on one of my fenceposts. There must be 4-6 of them in the large oak out front. The fate of Baby Oriole is uncertain. I haven't seen it this morning. The birds are still fussing out there, so maybe it lives on. Nor have I spotted the classic sac-shaped nest of the Baltimore Oriole in the oak.
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