Well, a few updates. When my friend went down to check on Lenny, he had flown the nest! It was almost impossible to find him as he was in a fenced-in area full of plants and vines and there was no room to enter–just to try to look. We couldn’t even reach past the chicken wire that held up the vines that obscured the heating unit. Nonetheless, we both looked for what added up to an hour, I would imagine. Finally, we just had to give up, but I stayed down in the hammock, hoping the parents would fly over and Lenny would somehow extricate himself.
When my friend came home, she took my place in the hammock and a half hour or so later I heard her call out that she needed help. She had spied Lenny and was able to reach in and extract him from his jungle prison. Back to the big rock, where lo and behold, his parents spotted him and his mother came and fed him one more time. Then it was into his cage and into the house before a COLOSSAL rainstorm hit. Buckets of water, crashing lightning and thunder that sounded like it was cracking the world open. So glad our baby bird was not out in that!
Later I discovered two interesting facts on the internet. #1. that just because we share a common last name, Lenny Dykstra does not serve as a good role model to name anyone after, even a bird. So, I’m up for suggestions about what to rename him. #2. that baby bird is most probably not a vermillion flycatcher but rather a house finch. He looks exactly like the image online and male house finches do get rosy coloring around the head and chest, which accounts for the rosier birds we’ve seen accompanying the dull females.
So, very early Monday morning, my house guest departs leaving my family two creatures larger. Hopefully the parent finches will continue to feed their baby and I’ll take over at night. I’ve done some reading about the diet of finches and will provide sunflower and thistle seeds to attract the parents and give them a close by place to feed so hopefully they’ll continue to feed him. Looks like I’ll be spending a lot of time in my hammock in the lower garden, since the rock is a familiar feeding spot for both baby and birth parents.
Morrie, in the meantime, is leaving a pathway of chaos in the front garden: pots tipped over, plants ripped out by the roots, little round stones from a mocajete spread over the terrace. Diego is complicit in the chasing games that created some of this disorder, but with the baby bird feeding in back, I dare not put the dogs there. I fear they don’t understand about inter-species family fealty.
Now it is 11:22 PM. Morrie is curled up beside me in bed, I can hear strains of banda music from the town down below. It is the festival for the town’s namesake, St. John the Baptist, who has done a good job of baptizing us all this day and for the week preceding it. The bird formerly known as Lenny is literally asleep with his head tucked under his wing and I am about to do the same. Your mission, if you should choose to accept it, is to help me think up a new name for baby bird. Sweet dreams to all, or, more likely, good morning.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
