Fame

A lovely article about Mortimer in our local newspaper

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/A-hawk-in-the-house-210778221.html?m=y&smobile=y

It's a Big Bad World Out There

Mortimer has been spending lots of time outside these past days and here's what we have learned....birds are racist.  Ok, perhaps racist is too strong a term, but it is amazing to see how all species of smaller birds react when Mortimer is around.  Based purely on his phenotype, these birds go crazy and start to send out alarm calls to bring other birds and they chatter at and fly around and dive bomb poor Mortimer.  They, of course, know he is a predator even if he is showing no threatening behaviors whatsoever.  So it's a hard world out there for Mr Mortimer!

His first day out I described in the last post and he was brought in by the kids after being bombarded by several species of birds and coming down onto the ground where the kids could get him.  The second day he flew out, he went on our roof and didn't come down so he spent the night outside.  His instinct is definitely to go to the highest point he can find!  We left windows open but in the morning he was still outside but had come a little too low for comfort since we do have a cat outside in the yard.  I transferred him to a tree branch and took the attached video as he was being heckled by several species of other birds (I only figured out how to zoom the iPad camera mode after taking this video but you can see him in the middle of the frame on the low branch).

After taking as much abuse as he could tolerate Mortimer left the outside world and flew inside to his high perch in our house.

We are having some household debates regarding Mortimer.  We all think it's good that he knows he can fly in the house to be safe.  The kids would like him to just stay here in the house and be theirs.  Carl thinks it's important that he spends as much time as possible outside to get more and more used to his real bird world and learn how to survive out there without getting too comfortable inside.  I think we should let him choose, leave windows and doors open and see what he does.  On Monday Mortimer flew outside and he hasn't come back inside yet.  He has stayed in trees around the yard, he is being continually harassed but is still staying outside.  We have put out food for him in places that he can see that are a bit high off the ground but he has not come for that food at all.  We know he has the ability to catch insects on his own but there is no way for us to know if he is successfully catching and eating anything.  That's hard!  We rely on the fact that he has flown back into the house once already so he knows he could do that again at any time if he really needs our help/food.  

This morning I came outside to see where he was perched and I couldn't find him visually.  So I made his call and he answered.  He is perched atop a large fruit tree in the back yard about 80 feet up and I felt blessed to be able to call him and have him respond!  I worry about him but I know there is little we can do for him once he is 80 feet above us!  So I trust he will come to us if he needs anything, I pray that his hunting instinct to survive will be strong enough to make up for the lack of teaching he received and I hope he sticks around a while.  But I may never be at eye level with him again and we will all miss having him in our home.  What a blessing he has been to our home!  

Can you find him?  Thank god he answers our calls so we can see where he is.....look towards the top, just under the 12:00 position....good luck

Hey.....guess who came down for food just as I finished typing the blog and taking the picture of him high up in the tree.......

Further updates to follow ;)!!

Fledging

 This week Mortimer has started to fly.  I was going to say he learned to fly but then I realized this is not a learned thing, it is an innate instinct that has now kicked in after all his feather growth and muscle development.  The kids and I were not in the house for his first flight but Carl was and since then he is flying from chair to couch, couch to table, always looking for the highest point on which to perch.  I was witness to his first big straight flight from the very front end of our house (the living room) to the very back part of our house (the kitchen) where he perched on a cross beam close to the ceiling just above the stove.  I have tried desperately to catch his flight on film to no avail (as yet).  Here he is on his high kitchen perch.

Last week Sunday (the day before his first flight) we had friends visiting as it was a big community Harvest festival.  I worked selling food all day and the kids were in and out helping where and when they could.  So after a long day Kamala and Efua sat down on the couch for a foot bath and a cucumber eye mask.  And guess who wanted to join in......

For the past two weeks we have consistently been putting his food in one spot on our front porch in the hopes that he will know he can always come there for food when he needs it.  However, to date he has never gone for himself to the porch to get the food.  He sits wherever he's perched and makes many noises that we guess are calls for food and in the end we will take him to the other side of the front porch and then he will hop to his food and eat.  After eating on Friday, he flew to the front gate and watched out into the world and then he took his first outside flight.

Perhaps you can imagine the excitement in the house as we all ran out into the street to see where he had flew.  It was Kahlil who found Mortimer perched in the top of a large bush in our front yard where he got to stay for a few hours before we finally brought him in to the house as night was approaching.

It is amazing to see the growth and development of Mortimer over the past month.  Today is four weeks since he came into our care and he has grown from a white downy 5 inch bird to a fully feathered and flying black, white and auburn underneath bird of prey.  We continue to love being part of his journey!  We look into his eyes and see his curiosity, intelligence and beauty and we wonder what else is going on inside that bird brain.  All of a sudden bird brain doesn't seem like such a negative thing at all!

Next step is trying to help him learn to survive in this big world......any and all tips and resources on how to go about this are welcomed!!