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Veterinarian documents baby bird rescue and recovery in 23 photos.

We get so busy, it's easy to forget to go outside or look out our windows and enjoy nature. This day-by-day account from a veterinarian and his sibling on the journey of a helpless baby bird reminded me of how much I love the little creatures of our world and how important it is to protect them. Enjoy!

Day 1

Here is the little chick on the first day. My brother had been out jogging, and found it on the sidewalk. It was actually still attached to part of its shell and some dried membranes. Clearly freshly hatched, we were unable to locate the nest in the group of trees above us. **NOTE** if you find a bird this young, it is best to try to locate the nest and put it back in. There is a myth that you can't touch a baby bird, because the parents will reject it due to the smell of humans. PLEASE don't try this at home! This is not meant as a guide, but more to show you the amazing development and growth of songbirds. Wildlife rehabilitation should only be carried out by those licensed to do so!

Day 2

Aren't baby birds cute in an ugly kind of way? We kept the chick in an incubator, carefully controlling the humidity and temperature. We decided she was a she (though we were never able to find out if it was male or female), and called her "Dumpling." All baby birds look very similar, so we had no way to really know what kind of bird this was. We'd have to wait and see how she grew, and what her feathers looked like.

Day 3

Baby birds eat a lot! We fed this chick primarily with crickets, mealworms, waxworms, caught insects, and a commercially available liquid formula for chicks. We fed the chick every 30 minutes for 14 hours/day, simulating what she would get in the wild. Just imagine what that means! This was just one chick, and most songbird broods will have anywhere from 2 - 5 chicks. The amount of insects songbird parents need to catch to feed their chicks (and themselves) is a bit staggering when you think about it. Since the parents don't feed their chicks overnight, we didn't either. This is opposed to many mammalian babies that need to be fed regularly around the clock.

Day 4

You can see here the amazing development of the wing feathers in just a few days' time. Also, she had a hilarious wispy mohawk of down feathers that got even more ridiculous when she got a little older. She would start squawking to be fed every 30-45 minutes. An interesting note: instincts are fascinating with these animals. Even with the poor coordination and closed eyes, this chick knew enough to back up to the edge of the nest we made for her and poop over the side, so as to not dirty the nest.

Day 5

By day 5, Dumpling was able to sit more "sternal" (on her chest with the legs tucked under her body) with more stability. Look at the changes in the feathers in just another 24 hours! She is actually starting to look like a bird! Her eyes were starting to open just a little bit by this time, as well.

Day 6

Here is a nice shot of the amazing continued development of her wing feathers. You can see them encased in a cornified sheath. Once the feather gets to its final size, this sheath disintegrates and the feather is allowed to spread open.

Day 7

Overnight, all of the feather sheaths fell away and -tada!- we have a bird! You can see here as well that she has a bent lateral toe on her left leg. Not much to be done about that in a bird this small, and it really didn't slow her down at all.

Day 8

"FEED ME!!" At this point, she was eating 3 large crickets +/- waxworms at every feeding. I'll attempt to make a gif later from some video I have of her scarfing them down.

Day 9

By this time, we were able to stop using the incubator. Since her body was covered in feathers, she was able to regulate her body heat on her own. The tufts of chick fluff and the eternally grumpy expression that baby birds have was hilarious.

Day 10

We moved her into more of a conventional cage, and gave her more materials to explore. She was really happy, despite her expression.

Day 11

She was able to officially perch for the first time! Definitely a big step in the right direction. She doesn't have much of a tail yet, so her balance isn't great, but she had a really strong grip and could hold herself up there very well, bad toe and all.

Day 12

She was a very sweet little bird, and enjoyed perching on our hands, early on. You can see some sprouting millet seeds in the background, which we added to her diet to continue to increase the variety of food she was exposed to. By this point, we actually didn't have to feed her as often. We would hand feed her every 1-2 hours, and place worms in the cage for her to forage for in between times.

Day 13

Almost 2 weeks from hatching, and she is now perching very well! You can see that her strength and balance has improved even compared to Day 11. Her legs are more upright, showing a better perching posture. This "hocks up" posture is very characteristic of 14-day old songbird chicks, so she is right on schedule.

Day 14

She is starting to look more mature. That hilarious baby down is disappearing. Now that she is over 2 weeks old, I'll start skipping days.

Day 17

Here she is in a larger cage that she graduated to. We put in freshly cut branches so she can have a variety of perching options, and can explore the leaves and twigs like she would in the wild. By this point, she is hopping and flying around the cage like a professional. **NOTE** Any of you with pet birds, it is very important to have a variety of perches. The best ones are branches you cut yourself from non-toxic trees. It's great, healthy enrichment for your pets!

Day 22

We started placing her cage out on the deck to get her exposed to the wind, the sun and other birds. This is important for socialization and training. Other birds would come to the feeders and interact with her, and she could watch them and learn their songs.

Day 23

This is one of my favorite pictures of her, showing her wonderfully patterned feathers. By this point, we decided she was likely a White Crowned Sparrow or Chipping Sparrow. WCS is a species of bird that is common around here, but you don't see them often because they don't come to bird feeders regularly. Chipping Sparrows are very common, but there were a few pictures of juveniles that didn't match well with her. Both are a migratory species, traveling south for the winter. We were hoping to get her fit for release in plenty of time to make that trip.

Day 25

Another lovely side view of her, showing her feather patterning. It provides for great camouflage as they flit among the trees.

Day 27

By this time, she was completely off of eating crickets (showed absolutely no interest in them), and her diet was more seed and worm-based. She was also eating on her own, completely. She actually didn't let us feed her anymore, which was a good sign.

Day 29

She loved all of the new leafy branches we'd put in for her. A large part of their diet in the wild is tree buds, and she'd go after those immediately whenever we put fresh branches in for her.

Day 33

At this point, she was essentially releasable. However, there were some expected storms rolling in over the next few days, so we decided to keep her for a few days longer to give her the best chance.

Day 36 — Release Day

After storms the night before, Day 36 dawned beautifully. Confident that the weather was going to be nice for several days, and that the recent rainfall would give her plenty of drinking and feeding opportunities, we decided this would be the perfect day to send her on her way! We drove to a nearby nature preserve about a mile from where she was initially found and where we knew there to be others of her kind.

Bye-bye, Dumpling!

We opened the cage door and stepped back. After a few minutes, she hopped out and flitted immediately up into a tree. She didn't hesitate at all. She immediately started exploring the branches, biting at tree buds and hopping from branch-to-branch like a wild bird. Pretty soon, we lost sight of her.

Hopefully, you enjoyed Dumpling's story, and learned a little about wild birds. I can't stress enough that you shouldn't try to raise wildlife of any sort unless you're trained to. Find a local wildlife rehaber or veterinarian to help you out! Please let me know if you have any questions, and I encourage you all to enjoy natures little miracles that are all around you!

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Pets

Man jumps out of his car with a puppy in the most adorable red-light moment ever recorded

"I JUST WITNESSED THE PUREST THING EVER."

via Celina Romera / Flickr

When you see someone jump out of their car at a red light to talk with another motorist, usually it's bad news. Most of the time, it's the moment when road rage gets personal.

But 26-year-old Celina Romera caught video of probably one of the most adorable red-light interactions between motorists on December 15 in Tampa, Florida.

In the video, an unidentified man pops out of his car at a stoplight with a darling puppy in his hand. In the other car, a big German Shepherd pops his head out and the two dogs exchange kisses.

"I JUST WITNESSED THE PUREST THING EVER," Romera wrote on Facebook.

After the light changes, the man with the puppy gently walks back to the car. In the video Romera can be heard saying, "It's okay, man. Take your time."

One could imagine that the dogs were barking at each other before the video began.Then, the owner of the puppy thought it was okay for the two dogs to meet. The American Kennel Club says that barking between dogs is a pretty crude way to communicate.

However, it is part of a host of messages that dogs send to one another.

The job of a dog's owner is to determine if the dogs are ready to share a sniff or of one is fearful.

"The combination of barking, body language, and approach-avoidance behavior gives away the fearful dog's motivation, even to us relatively uneducated body-language readers," the Club says on its blog.

The original video Romera posted has been shared over 120,000 times.

The heartwarming video is a reminder that nothing can bring two strangers and millions of Facebook viewers together quite like dogs.


This article originally appeared on 12.16.19


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Identity

10 Black women sat in first class on an airplane and it revealed a lot about race in America

"This weekend I went on a girls trip. 10 Black women flying first class. People literally could not process how it was possible."

via Angie Jones / Twitter and Matt Blaze / Flickr

Software developer Angie Jones' recent girls trip revealed that America still has a long way to go when it comes to race.

To most, that's not surprising. But what's unique is how the specific experience Jones and her friends went through revealed the pervasive way systemic racism still runs through our culture.

Jones is the Senior Director of Developer Relations at Applitools, holds 26 patented inventions in the United States of America and Japan, and is an IBM Master Inventor.

On July 27, she tweeted about a flight she took with nine other Black women and they all sat in first class. "People literally could not process how it was possible," she wrote. "Staff tried to send us to regular lines. Passengers made snide remarks. One guy even yelled 'are they a higher class of people than I am?!'"

Jones and her friends were the targets of racism that ranged from the seemingly unconscious — people who assumed that Black people don't sit in first class — to the blatant — those who were seriously bothered that Black people were being treated as having a higher status.

It's interesting that she didn't mention anyone saying "good for you" for succeeding in a world that often holds people of color back. Instead, she was greeted with incredulity and jealous rage.

There are a lot of white people who can't stand the idea of a Black person being elevated above them. It's disturbing that in there are still some who will admit it publicly.

Jones' tweets inspired a lot of people to share their stories about the racism they've experienced while flying first class.

Jones' tweets also angered some people to the point that they denied her story. To which she responded, "To those saying I'm lying, you're a huge part of the problem," she wrote. "You tell yourself a notable person is lying (for what reason, I cannot figure out) before you believe there are actual racists in...America."

One Twitter user came up with the perfect retort to the person who asked, "Are they a higher class of people than I am?!"

This article originally appeared on 07.29.21

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Parenting

Man asks how to help his wife who works full-time with a baby at home and keeps getting the same answer

More and more families are trying to scrape by — by trying to do it all

Photo by Katie Emslie on Unsplash

There are times in parenting where you just feel kind of useless.

You can't carry the baby, take a late-night breastfeeding shift, or absorb any of the pain and discomfort of childbirth.

Sometimes the best you can do is to try to take care of your partner.

That's what brought user u/DietyBeta to the AskParents subreddit with a well-meaning question.

"My wife watches our 1yo, works, and is 12 week pregnant. How can I make her daily life easier while I'm away at work?"

He says that when he gets home from work, he takes over all parenting and homemaking duties.

But yeesh! That's still... a lot to handle. No wonder his wife is stressed out.

A few folks chimed in to pat the OP on the back. After all, it's great to see a dad who realizes how much is falling on mom's shoulders and actively looking for ways to lighten the load!

Some helpful suggestions rolled in, like taking over meal prep and making her easy lunches to heat up, hiring cleaners, or paying someone to walk the dogs.

woman in black shirt lying on couch Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash


But then even more people came in to the comments asking the same question over and over: If mom is working, why isn't the 1-year-old in daycare?

u/young-mommy wrote: "Is the one year old in daycare? If not, I would start there. Working from home with a child gets harder and harder as they enter toddlerhood"

u/min2themax said: "It’s nice of you to be asking how to help her but she really is getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop here. It sounds like she is literally always working or parenting. Sometimes both at the same time. Walking the dogs and making her lunches and prepping meals and doing laundry is all well and good but this is not at all sustainable."

u/alternative-box3260 said: "Have the one year old in daycare. I was in a similar situation and it’s impossible. I was able to breath after that, not before."

And u/sillychihuahua26 wrote: "She’s caring for your 1.year old while working? That’s a horrible plan. You guys need childcare like yesterday."

We have a legitimate childcare crisis in our country, and stories like this one really bring it to life.

Childcare in the United States isn't nearly accessible or affordable enough for most families. Period.

ChildCare Aware found that that average cost of childcare in 2022 was $10,853 per year, or roughly 10% of a median family income (in 2024, it's likely even more than that — yet the actual workers at childcare centers are somehow severely underpaid).

But even that eye-popping number is conservative. Anyone who lives anywhere close to a city (or in California or New York) knows the number will be way higher. It's just not feasible for most families to put their child, let alone multiple children, in full-time care while they're young.

And yet! The percentage of households with two parents working full-time has been rising for decades. Life is more expensive than ever, and the extra income from two working parents really helps, even if it's offset by those child care costs.

More and more families are trying to scrape by — by trying to do it all

woman in white shirt sitting on brown wooden armchair Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash

Now we don't know whether the OP's family can afford childcare for their 1-year-old or not, although in a later update to the post he wrote:

"As far as daycare, she doesn't want to because she feels like she would be missing out on the time"

So even if you can afford childcare, there's the still the crushing guilt of shipping your child off to be raised by strangers to deal with! Classic.

(Take one guess who shoulders most of the daycare guilt — dads or moms?)

The work-from-home revolution has been a Godsend for parents in certain ways — flexibility, balance, less commuting time — but its also saddled many of them with double duty.

'Hey how about you work full-time because we need the money AND keep an eye on the kids, since you're home anyway!'

But it doesn't work like that, and trying to do both is crushing modern parents.

In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States just put out an official advisory based on the plummeting mental state of today's parents.

We know parents are having a hard time and that it's getting picked up in the national conversation. But hearing about a mom working full-time with a 1-year-old on her hip while pregnant, and a dad stuck working out of the house who's at a total loss for how to make things better really paints a pretty bleak picture.

No one should have to work full-time and parent full-time, at the same time.

A fridge full of microwavable lunches and a fleet of dog walkers isn't going to make it any better until things start changing from the very top.

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Joy

A mom mentioned she played the fiddle so the bar band handed her one. She totally shredded.

Seriously impressive talent.

A mom mentioned she played the fiddle so the bar band handed her one. She totally shredded.
shorts Today we are featuring a video from @cynamin.roll This mom brought down the house with her awesome fiddle playing!
- YouTube

The devil may have gone down to Georgia, but it appears he took a detour to a bar in Nashville and possessed a middle-aged mom on his way down there.

In a TikTok video that's been viewed 5.5 million times, Olivia Reeth's daughter shared that her family had gone to the Whiskey Bent Saloon in Nashville and was watching the Moonshine Outlaw Band perform. Her mom told the band she played the fiddle, and mid-song, the fiddle player decided to hand his instrument over to her.

You kind of have to wonder what the guy was thinking. Did he imagine she'd be able to keep up with the band? Did he figure she'd play a few bars and then hand it back?


Whatever he was picturing, it almost certainly wasn't what she ended up laying down.


Mom might as well have said, "I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, dude" because she came prepared. In hindsight, her whipping off of her scarf was the sign it was all over, but who'd have known?

Watch her shred that man's fiddle and see how he reacts:

@skootbutt123

#nashville #whiskeybentsaloon #fiddle

The best part is when the guy pretends to boot the band's fiddler out of the bar. And then Mama got sassy with it! Absolute legend, making her skills appear effortless as she walked around the room. Didn't even take her coat off. Looking like she walked in off the street, which she basically did.

The woman's daughter shared that her mom is classically trained and that her dad was the one who introduced her to country and bluegrass music. They both play in two bands, Coconut Radio Band and Barney’s Bullet.

Seriously impressive talent. And you gotta love the respect the band's fiddle player gave her, despite her basically stealing his soul. What a fun exchange between musicians who clearly love what they do and love to share it with others.


This article originally appeared on 12.28.22

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Joy

18-year-old took her college savings and bought the restaurant where she was a dishwasher

Samantha Frye, the newest owner of Rosalie's restaurant, is proving there's more than one way to invest in your future.

Canva

There are many way to invest in your future

Eighteen year old Samantha Frye has traded college life for entrepreneurship, and she has no regrets.

Frye began working at Rosalie's Restaurant in Strasburg, Ohio at 16 as a dishwasher, working up the ranks as a kitchen prep, server, then line cook. All while working a second job, sometimes third job.

After graduating high school, Frye started college at Ohio State with plans of studying business or environmental engineering. But when she came back to work a shift at Rosalie’s for winter break, an opportunity arose—the owners had planned to sell the restaurant.

"I was thinking that maybe [buying] was something I wanted to do," she told News 5 Cleveland. "I had savings because I was saving for college, so I had quite a bit of money saved away. And I was like, I could possibly do this."

Frye acted on that gut feeling, and used her college funds to buy Rosalie’s. Now she spends every day at her new business, either in the kitchen, on the floor or in the office meeting with sales reps.

Though Fyre's mother, Brandi Beitzel, confessed to USA Today that she wasn’t initially “on board” with her daughter abandoning college plans, over time she became very “proud” of her for forging her own path, and applauded her “drive and ambition.”

That sentiment is echoed both by Rosalie’s regulars and staff, who are amazing at the young woman’s drive and confidence.

“I just really think she's a great example of a young lady that is following her dreams and doing what she loves,” said Leanna Gardner, an employee.

It’s no secret that there are significantly less students attending college—down by about a million since the start of the pandemic. And while there are no doubt potential long term collective consequences to that, with exorbitantly high student loan rates, it’s easy to see why young adults would avoid massive debt for careers that don’t require a college degree.

Luckily, there are more efforts to make college an affordable option being made nationwide, like offering a free two years worth of college to graduating students.

And as Frye is proving by example—not going to college is certainly not a death sentence for one’s future. There are many ways to plant seeds for success. Honestly, college or no college, no matter which path is taken, there will likely be more uncertainty than there are guarantees. Perhaps the best bet then is trust those pings of intuition.

"You don't need college to make a decent living, and I think that's what a lot of people think nowadays," Frye attests. "Follow your instinct, honestly. If it feels right, just do it."


This article originally appeared on 5.22.23

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