From there we went to St. Regis, Montana and had a Pit stop-- literally. The place is known for the cherries, and we bought a couple pounds. All the way to our property, we were spitting cherry pits out the windows, and the guy behind us--well, he's gonna find some interesting stuff in his grill.
We arrived at the property late, about 1 or2 at night. The first couple days we got set up.
We didn't find any turkeys this time, but Neal and I cornered a deer. It was a doe, which Neal and I chased around the hill above our house. I almost had it, but then it disapeered on me.
The next day on our way in from town, we discovered a baby robin on the side of the road. It's wing was slightly hurt, so we took it back to camp. When we got there, we pulled out some bugs that had drowned in the cheap Walmart plastic pool we bought, and fed them to the bird. I discovered how to feed him when I stuck my hand in the top of the cracker-box house we made to handle him. He thought I was going to feed him and chirped his head off and opened his mouth wide. So I grabbed a fly and dangled it over his mouth, and tried my best to imitate the whistle the parent makes. He opened his mouth wide and I dropped a fly into it. He wouldn't always hold still during feeding time, so I missed his gaping beak by a long shot. We put his home (made out of a fishy-cracker box with a whole in the top and a closable door on the side) in the middle of a tomato crate, so he could wander around. He crapped all over the place, especially when you tried to pick him up. He HATED being handled.
typically, when you find a hurt bird, the morale is low and they don't care if they live or die. They often don't eat because of the trauma. It wasn't the case with this little guy. He had so much energy, he tried to jump over the crate walls to escape.
I tried to go to sleep and he slept pretty good with an occasional chirp, but at about six or so in the morning, he didn't hesitate to let us know he was hungry. I hurried and took him out of the trailer before he woke anyone up and fed him breakfast.
It's amazing how much food it takes to keep this guy going. Though out the day, we'd hear robin calls, but angry or startled calls. There is a BIG difference between a friendly, good morning whistle, and a worried chirp. We figured out that this must be the parents, and that they weren't afar off. So we put him in his crate in a clearing where his parents could easily see and hear him. Not long after, Siberia shows up. When he sees the robin, he sees a fun toy to play with. I had to rescue the poor thing from the dog. Siberia actually got his snout stuck in the cracker box, thinking the robin was in there.
Siberia kept following us when we tried to take the robin somewhere else, so we threw him a sausage and made a break for it. We took the robin back to where we found him, which, we hoped, wasn't far from the nest. I set the little guy up on the ledge where we could see him, but also, far enough away so the parents did n't see us as a threat.
After waiting half an hour, we were about to give up, when we heard a hawk call. Knowing the poor robin would make fine dining for Mr. Red-tail, I ran up to where the robin was. I picked him up, and (he hates being handled) chirped his bloody head off like I was going to murder him or something. Within ten seconds, mama and daddy show up, and land on a tree just three feet from us. They look like they want to dive bomb me, so I slowly back away.
Finally, I realized that the robin was safe with his parents, and Neal and I trotted back up the hill.
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