Critters

Well, it was unlikely that the gopher incursion into the garden area would be a one time incident.  Sure enough, the next morning there was a new mound by the pots along the fence.  And like the first one, the tunnels had been backfilled adequately so that there was no hope of finding the runway and setting traps.

And so things stayed for a couple days.  Then, this morning as I was walking around checking on how things were growing, the ground collapsed opening up clean access to the gopher runway. I put out the trap and hoped I guessed correctly from which direction the gopher would be returning.  Later in the day, I found the trap sprung and one less gopher to be undermining things.

Of course one of his many relatives will likely move into his vacated tunnels in a day or so.  This won’t be the last time.

At four weeks old the red rump chick finally has the red feathers for which the species was given common name.  There is still a lot of the gray down on his back mixed in and hiding the red.
He also discovered he had wings and started exercising them when we took a trip down the the LA area.  Perhaps it was because of the motion of the car as we started up that he flapped to regain his balance and realized that he had wings.  And every so often since then he has been exercising those wings.

A few days later, at four weeks old, the chick was well covered with feathers and looked like a three quarters scale version of the adults.  He is spending his days in a larger enclosure so he can work on learning to climb, perch and use those wings while he also starts learning how to shell seeds and feed himself. 

The garden has been coming along nicely.  Since I am still waiting for something to harvest, I found other tasks to perform.  The past couple days I worked on getting the paths around and between the beds cleared of sprouting weeds and leveling them off.

This morning after making an inspection of how things were growing, I headed down the hill to the shed.  Not more than ten or fifteen minutes later, on my return, I noticed a new gopher mound on the side of the hill next to the garden.  As I came up further, I discovered that the critter had not stopped there.  He had dug under the garden bed and created a huge mound on the other side.  

>Obviously the gopher was not impressed by my hard work smoothing the path. And the little beast was smart enough to backfill his tunnels far enough so I could not find the runway for setting a trap.  Of course, he is probably pretty miffed we put the hardware cloth between his domain and the tender veggies growing above. I cleaned up the mess and the path is level again.  Odds are this is only the first assault on the garden from below.

Baby bird (red rump parakeet) has been growing fast enough you can almost see it happen. The chick has gone from just a touch of white fuzz, to a coat of gray down to the beginnings of real feathers.  At three weeks old the pinfeathers are starting to show and he has figured out a few things about the way the his world works.  Meal time is still messy, but gradually more of the food is going into the chick than is landing on the outside.  Once the baby has had his fill, the frantic attacks on the feeding syringe stop and he heads for the hand to relax a while.

Despite being so tiny, the three day old red rump chick was tough. Its mama decided she had better things to do than take care of her offspring. So his care and feeding was up to the humans who barely had a clue about such things.

Online information sources about hand feeding chicks did not prove to be much help. For instance, they disagreed on some very specific points. One said to be sure that the chick’s crop was completely empty before feeding. Another said it was okay to feed if it wasn’t completely empty. And for other points — well, the directions were clearly for larger species and / or older chicks.

It took a few days to get the “nest” satisfactory. The chick did not stay put in the center of the homemade brooder. It kept wandering off and would be found under one of the paper towels or tissues that were put in there for support. Eventually a shallow tupperware dish was found and crumpled tissues filled most of the area that wasn’t occupied by the chick. The baby seemed to settle down after feedings almost immediately when he was in the small cozy space.

Of course the whole feeding routine has been a learning experience for both of us. For the first few days, feeding meant getting as much food on the outside of the chick as when inside him. The tip of the feeding syringe seemed too big for the beak it had to service. Fortunately the chick did get enough to eat and in a very short time his size and appetite increased dramatically.

Baby has made it through two weeks of being hand feed and is currently covered in fuzzy gray down.  A few more days until real feathers appear and we may get the first hints of the baby’s gender.