Little Big Bird And Other Stories

Hello everyone. I'm your soaking wet doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. Welcome and thank you for tuning in to The Daily Bone.

This is post number 1000! 

OK, enough with the singing! I have a lot to report. I'll start with the reason I'm soaking wet. There was a big thunderstorm. 

Wow! Did it ever come down! It only thundered a little bit, so no problem there.

I think this pounding rain might qualify as "raining cats and dogs!"

Of course, afterwards, I had to do a full exploration of the puddles and mud.

I didn't find any other cats and doggies. 

In case you're wondering, on the other side of the fence is the root end of that big spruce tree that fell down in a wind storm a few months ago. It made a huge crater and damaged part of the fence. The logs are in front of the fence so I won't be able to crawl under it. (We'll get around to cleaning that up and fixing the fence later this summer.) But is that a great mud puddle, or what?

Anyway, now I'm soaked! 

Woooo-hoooo!

For my next story, loyal readers may remember the little bird nest in the bushes by our front door. It was built by a tiny chipping sparrow. It originally had four little babies in it. We don't know what happened to the first one. The second one fell out of the nest and died last Sunday. The third one flew away. But there is still the fourth one; and he's getting bigger by the minute! 

He's outgrown the nest, and is starting to look like one of those baby grackle gargoyles. We're pretty sure now that he's not a chipping sparrow, but a brown-headed cowbird. These birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and then say bye-bye and let the foster birds raise their chick.

He sits on the nest all day, rain or shine, and waits for poor little Mama bird to feed him. He's not too shy and lets ghostwriter pat him on the head. She felt sorry for Mama bird, and fed the little gargoyle some bread, which he gobbled down with gusto! 

Is there more where that came from?

Now for the science part of our program. Here's a short video about cow birds. After viewing this, ghostwriter decided that the baby birdie in our bushes is not so nice after all. It explains why he never leaves the nest, even though he's bigger than Mama bird. He'll continue to sit there and let Mama bird work hard all day to fill his gullet until he's old enough to take care of himself.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Well, here's an update. He finally left the nest this morning!  Check it out. He totally flattened it!

Ghostwriter caught a glimpse of him up in the arbor vitae. But as of now, his whereabouts are unknown. We imagine poor little Mama bird is still feeding his gaping maw! 

And now, for the Flower Friday report. The heavy rain has wiped out the peonies, irises and poppies. But here's what else is blooming this week:

Clemetis.

Roses.

Snapdragons.

Milkweed.

We'd like to dedicate this Flower Friday to our good friends at Dory's Back Yard. Their little doggie named Bilbo went over the Rainbow Bridge this week. This is especially sad because their girlie Dory just crossed the Bridge a few months ago too.

We know well how hard it is to lose a cherished doggie. My esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel has been gone for almost a year and we still miss him terribly! But losing two dear pups within a few months is just heart-breaking! We found a nice video for him and his family, and hope it helps a little bit.

Please go visit them and leave your condolences at:  dorysbackyard

So that's it for post number 1000! I hope we have the chance to write 1000 more. We appreciate all of our readers and the Blogville community for their continued interest and support.