Trapped

For about a week, I kept hearing something scrabbling inside my chimney, near my woodstove. It wasn’t all the time, only once in a while. And being the chicken that I am, I couldn’t bring myself to go down into the cellar and open the trap to see what it was (shades of Clark Griswold and the squirrel in the Christmas tree from Christmas Vacation kept going through my head), so I called the one person that I always call in matters like this…my brother (he has not fear of the cellar, nor of wildlife springing out of chimneys at him!).

Come to find out, it was a poor little mourning dove trapped in the chimney and unable to fly out! Derek was able to get him out, bring him outside, hose the soot off of him and put him in a tree in my backyard until he was ready to fly away.

Poor little thing was probably terrified! But he’s safe now and will live to tell the other mourning doves of his adventure in the chimney.

The Gathering Tree

When I left for work yesterday morning, I heard the chittering and chirping of birds on high…not loudly, mind you, but ever so gently. I looked up to see this tree with the one crow perched, but upon further inspection I was able to pick out several chickadees, a couple nut hatches, 2 sets of mourning doves and a wood pecker. They all blended in so well that I really had to look to see them all. Apparently this was the place to be as the sun rose.