Curious Eyes & Lazulis; When Baby Buntings Learned To Fly

I was all tied up in knots as I watched a young family of Lazuli Buntings move boldly into their next important phase.

Number one of three, whose first flight took them safely to the band of trees at rivers edge.

A gift is something you haven’t earned, so really, questions of one’s worthiness are quite irrelevant to any discussion of it, but that doesn’t stop someone like me from wondering what possibly I could have done to deserve such an unexpected boon. Stated in simplest terms, magic happened, big magic, and I was there at the edge of it, completely surprised, looking on and pinching myself. I certainly cannot claim any right to it. Not even a glimmer, this slightly chaotic, collection of sacred moments.

Sharing it here is a part of my ‘thank you’ to the world that allows such things, that keeps inviting us to watch and yes, even participate in the completely interrelated wonder of it all.

Imagine being allowed to witness and even play a minor role in the graduation of an entire Lazuli Bunting family, as all four babies leapt from a branch beside their nest within seconds of one another and flew. Or at least, tried.

Number two of three who made it to the safety of cover, first flight. This little one flew first to a blackberry bramble, rested a while there and then winged on to the cover of a copse of trees, another twenty feet away. Number three, made it all the way into the trees, first flight. Never did find it in there, so I was not able to make its graduation picture.

Three of the Lazuli ‘littles’ transformed themselves from nestlings into fledglings in the distance of one, exuberant, wobbly, frantic, hopeful, fifty-ish foot flight, apiece. The fourth, a day or two behind the others developmentally but quite obviously not wanting to be left behind, flutter-flopped out and down into the tall grass and weeds no more than a few feet west of their newly abandoned nest. Four feet is approximately forty-six shy of the intended and probably, necessary goal. It was also just about the perfect number of feet from safety if you were one of those two hungry crows perched atop that band of trees at river’s edge, watching this all unfold.

Someone’s wings don’t quite work yet and so this someone is stuck in a tangle of grass stems where she crash-landed moments after leaping, ever so bravely into the void.

At first I told myself I wasn’t going to get in the middle of things, you know, let nature take its course and all that...

Meet the Momma bird, a stunningly handsome, protective, level-headed and diligent, female, Lazuli Bunting. She’s everything you’d hope for in a heroine.

Momma Lazuli is the very picture of grace under fire. Somehow she locates and keeps track of all four of her fledglings in the places their awkward wings have taken them, then delivers meals and encouragement. Here, she is looking down into the tall grass where her littlest (not yet ready for flight), has crash landed and remains more or less stuck between stalks of tall grass a foot or so off the ground.

I watched, utterly fascinated as Momma Bunting flew in close, sorted out where her errant little one was situated and then flew away, only to return a few minutes later with a winged insect in her beak. So pragmatic and comforting.

Navigating the maze of stalks and leaves to reach her little one proved challenging but within a minute of fretful, short, indirect flights and hops (presumably to keep any lethal observers from pinpointing her littlest, wannabe flyer’s current location), and lots of slightly frantic-seeming, encouragement verbalizations, she had successfully navigated a path to her ‘almost’ fledgling, who remained stuck among a discord of unyielding grass stalks about a foot above the ground. The meal was passed from bill to open mouth and then, away she flew. She had three other, also new, though more successful fliers to visit and keep feeding, as well.

I watched another two or three cycles of this heroic sorcery, finding and then delivering meals and encouragement to each birdlet before changing my mind about stepping into the middle of a domestic family issue with a helpful hand.

When I approached the littlest bunting, suspended there in the tall grass all hell broke loose. Momma and another female bunting (An auntie? A helper?), flew daringly close and made plenty of noise, convinced that I meant their little charge, harm. And the little one, seeing my tenuous approach and then my big hand reaching down into the dry grass jungle that held her hostage, began flapping her tiny wings and working her way lower and farther into the maze. I pounced. And missed. Pounced again and surrounded the little one with very careful fingers which she somehow slipped through while crying out for help from Momma in frantic peals of fear.

Third try went much better. I quickly realized there was no advantage to playing timid, steeled myself against their alarm cries and my dread that they actually believed I was out to hurt them. I pulled my closed hand calmly up through the criss-cross of dried stalks and toward my face, all the time talking to the encircled baby bird in my most calming, reassuring voice, explaining that I was a friend and was only here to help get her into a safer place. The warmth of her sparsely feathered little body against my palm, and those scritchy little toe claws triggered something protective in me that maybe she, in that selfsame moment, sensed. For she calmed then, grew silent and seemed to lean in. I continued to talk to her, explaining that I was going to place her back in the tree, near the nest she’d left just fifteen or twenty minutes before.

“It will be easier for you to perch and hide and so much easier for your momma to come to you with food,” I explained.

In the first image you can see the nest (top of frame), the branch that the little one perched on (upper right), following her rescue from the tall grass (below), and my camp chair observation post (bottom, center). In the distance you can also see the blackberry bramble where fledgling #2 landed, and the safety of the trees, beyond. In the second pic you can see into the cup-shaped nest, complete with all the bits of fishing line that Momma Bunting used in its construction.

Reaching up then toward the compact, cup-shaped and almost invisible from even two feet away, nest, I began to open my fingers to allow the little heat bomb in my hand to get her bearings and prepare for a new, more comfortable setting. She just sat there for several seconds looking at me, nestled and relaxed in the cupped palm of my hand, then flutter-hopped over to a bare stretch of branch just inches away, turned, facing out, toward me, locked her miniature feet around a pencil-thin branchlet, wobbled momentarily as she gained her balance and looked instantly content.

Sigh…

I backed away, slowly, still talking in my most reassuring voice and waited for Momma Bird to do the simple math. Her baby was ok. I was not Satan or one of his baby bird hurting minions. This was no longer a crisis.

Feeling safe again, the littlest bunting nods off for a few while Momma is out procuring her next meal.

As Momma Bird puzzled on this unexpected scenario for a few, the little one nodded off momentarily and I pulled my camp chair over, maybe ten or so feet away from ‘little miss’ up in the tree, leaned back, camera in my lap and, in the most non-aggressive seeming posture I could muster, waited.

Within two or three minutes, Momma Bird had flown to the far side of the tree and flutter-hopped her way from branch to branch until she appeared on the branchlet beside her now calm little chick with a newly acquired, fat-bodied treat. Bingo.

This feeding series is worth the effort to click on each image. Such a large meal for such a tiny little bird person.

The littlest Lazuli gets the biggest meal.

We now had a safe baby, camouflaged on a leafy branch just a foot or so from the nest she and her siblings had occupied until maybe an hour before, reunited with her mother, who once again had a half-dozen, safe and untraceable routes in and out with which to stealthily bring her littlest, would-be flier the food that would help her keep growing muscle and pushing out feathers. The world suddenly looked quite a bit kinder and Momma Bunting’s task load seemed ever-so-much more doable.

The ‘auntie?’ A second female, distinctive blackberry stains on her beak, seemed helpful during the crisis, both as a scout and a meal procurer/deliverer. This was not something I would have expected to see.

Over the years, Lazuli Buntings have proven even more elusive and camera shy than the beloved American Goldfinches I love to tease about, all the ways they seem to laugh at me, standing there, holding my hopeful camera as they fly away. If Lazuli Buntings laugh, I certainly haven’t noticed. They never seem to say goodbye at all, they simply disappear. Poof.

This was by far the closest interaction I have had with Lazuli Buntings and I’ve been their fan and student for decades. Even now, a couple of weeks after these events unfolded, I’m still a little emotionally spun up and awed by it.

Striking to behold, a turquoise, sandstone and clay colored male Lazuli Bunting. As with humans, so with buntings; some dads are attentive, dedicated partners, helping with feeding and tending the nestlings. Others are pretty much non-existent when it’s time to feed and protect the little ones. The father of this nest’s little ones was nowhere present during my observations but there was another female who appeared from time to time with a watchful eye and a beakful of nutritious bugs. Some other varieties of birds regularly have ‘aunties’ and ‘helpers’ during nesting season, but I was unaware that Lazuli Buntings behaved this way. No one I’ve spoken to, thus far has rejected the notion of such behavior, outright, but it is apparently not the norm, either.