What I Did For Earth Day

A few weeks ago I noticed a bird that always seemed to fly away from somewhere really quickly whenever I walked out of or towards my door. Birds kind of make me nervous and it would freak me out whenever it happened. I also started to notice a bunch of sticks all over my patio area. But it has been so windy lately that I figured they had just blown in. About two weeks ago, after the bird scared me to death while walking in the house, I did a little investigating and realized a starling was building a nest inside the dryer vent. The twigs that were scattered all over the patio were ones that were to large to fit in the vent.

What the heck do you do when a bird starts building its nest in your vent? 

A few days later, my mom came over to visit my grandma and I told her about the bird situation. We went outside to look in the vent, but it’s pretty high up! So we got a kitchen chair but that really wasn't enough height. So we grabbed a step stool my grandma had, balanced it on top of a flower pot, and my mom climbed up.

It was kind of hard for her to see in the vent but she pulled out some twigs and said she would probably need to come over another day, with the shop vac, to get everything out.

Fast forward to last Thursday….. I noticed the bird was back. And I could see sticks poking out of the vent so I knew the bird was rebuilding. I called my mom and she and my dad planned to come over the following Monday to clean it out and put something up to prevent it from getting back in.

So Monday, Earth Day, my dad climbed up on the put and was shocked by the inside of the vent. It was completely full of twigs!! He took a picture and pulled the first handful out.

 I stopped him and asked if there were any eggs in the nest. He told me it was too early for eggs and kept pulling out more and more stuff. After a couple handfuls he turned around and said to me “We have to clean this vent out. This is a fire hazard”. In my head I was thinking “Yeah…… I know we do…….” He put his hand back in the vent and pulled out two small turquoise eggs….. still warm. I held them in my hands as he reached in and grabbed two more eggs. I took them inside, put them in a bowl filled with washcloths and stuck them under a lamp.

My dad pulled out tons of stuff from that vent! I wish this picture did it justice!!
It also doesn't show how much he had to suck up with the vacuum!!!

He said the bird had built up a wall inside the vent, to keep too much hot air from getting through. He made a comment about how my grandma’s dryer was probably acting funny because it wasn't getting any air flow. It was crazy because just a few days earlier, my grandma had asked me if I thought it was taking a lot longer for clothes to get dry. She thought one of the heating coils was going out, when all along it was the bird’s nest.
My dad is very smart and he built a short of cage contraption around the vent so the bird can’t get back in.

 I feel kind of bad about it….. At one point, we had gone inside to look at the eggs and when my dad got back up to vacuum it out, the bird flew out. Poor mama bird!! We destroyed her
nest and took her eggs!!
I felt really bad about the eggs! I tried to keep them warm under the lamp, but after everything was done and cleaned up, when we picked them up, they were cold. So what did I do on Earth Day??? I killed some of Mother Nature’s creatures. Jeez!!! I really did feel bad! I even considered calling IFA to see if they would take them!! But then we shut off all the lights in the house and my dad held a flashlight under each egg and all you could see was a yolk. Phew!! No fully formed baby birds ready to hatch any day!!