So Yesterday, my little foster-starling flew off with his mom, we think. It's the culmination of a five-day story, which starts the morning after the dinner at Claire's, with me and a large hangover chasing a poor terrified fledgeling, who has fallen out of his nest, around the garage at 06h45 last Tuesday. So in the end, said fledgeling is caught, cleaned up (because the garage is very dusty) and returned to said nest (or so I thought) in the roof of the garage. Immediately, his sibling takes one look at me and leaps out of the entrance to the nest and into the front garden where 377 neighbourhood cats are waiting. SO I bail out of the garage and chase another terrified baby starling around for about fifteen minutes and finally get him back into the roof as well. Cut to Tuesday night. I head back into the garage to check on my little birds and find one of them again on the floor. CAtch him, clean him, back into the roof. Head off to karate. Get back, check the garage because I do not want to open the door and find them on the floor and I drive over them, or they run off into the night. Both of the little birds are there on the floor. We realise - my sister and I - that in fact we have not been putting them anywhere near the nest, merely back into the roof. WIth no other real options, we put them back into the roof. One stays put, the other bails for the nest and falls out into the garden. Retrieve starlinglet from garden, place back in the roof. The other is nowhere to be found. We hope he's gone back to the nest which I can see, but can't reach, and can't see into. I didn't sleep on Tuesday night, worrying about where the other one had got to. Wednesday morning, only one of them is in the roof. He is trying very hard to get to his mom, who is trying very hard to find him, but since he's not in the nest, she can't. We realise that they have got out of a small hole next to the nest and can't get back in. The mom can't get through the hole either. The baby is panicking, so is the mother. Get into the roof, retrieve the baby, plug the hole best that I can, throw the baby back into its nest. The baby is happy, the mom is happy, still no sign of the other sibling, though. Immediately, though, the baby goes out after the mother, chases her onto the roof, spreads his fledgeling wings (even though he can't really fly, as we have discovered) and plummets over yonder somewhere out into the neighbour's (or even a house or two further along or behind) garden. Thursday afternoon, my sister is roused by some or other racket in the back garden and finds a starlinglet trapped behind a plant. He can't fly, either, on account of being too small. Whether or not this is the missing sib from tuesday night, or Wednesday morning's escape attempt, we don't know. Anyway, his mom is still circling and coming down to feed him (and it's amazing how they can actually find each other when there are literally dozens of starlings on our block alone and he knows which one is her and only squawks when she flies overhead) so we board up the gap under the gate so he can't get into the road, make sure he can't fall into the drain, lock up our cat inside and leave mother and baby to do their thing. At sunset, she pisses off; he's left alone. We bring him in, put him in a box in some towels, let him sleep inside. At first light, the mom starts squawking outside, he tries to get to her, we take him outside, she feeds him etc etc. During the day it starts to bucket with rain, so I leave the university to go home to fashion a shelter of sorts for him so he doesn't get drenched or drown - this involves a bucket lying on its side, suspended on a few bricks to lift it a couple inches off the ground with some towels inside. First I had to find him, though, hiding under a very narrow gap near the gate. He lives in the bucket during the day the rest of Friday, Saturday and most of Sunday, sleeping in the box inside at night. We name him Feathered Bob (Feathers in my case; when it comes to generic things, I give them generic names. All birds are called Feathers, all cats are called Fluffy, all dogs are called Puppy, homeless street kids and all other schoolkids etc are called Small Child, everything else is referred to as Bubs. My mom and sister liked Bob, though). Anyway, we watched him learning to fly and whatever over the last few days, with his mom trying to get him to follow her. Yesterday morning, I woke up with a horrible hangover (from Special K's 21st the night before) and I took him outside and he leaped out of the box and flew around the garden at head height for a bit. I said to my mom, today is the day, I think. He sat in the bucket all day long, coming out to be fed and practice flying. We headed out for an hour or so to do some shoppipng, and when we came back, they were gone. I'm hoping he did get the hang of it all and go with her - the lack of feathers on the ground or anywhere in the back garden seem to indicate that wherever he went, it involved no struggling, so that in theory rules out the 377 neighbourhood cats. Also, the fact that his mom didn't come back looking for him every half-hour or so (like she has over the last few days) to feed him seems to indicate that she knows where he is. He was a really cute little bird. Hopefully he still is. So it's kinda bittersweet, really. Still, the trauma of it all means we are going to close up the entrance to the nest in the garage so we don't have to stress about Feathered Bob Jr next spring. -d-