What’s wild at your house?

There is so much beauty and interesting things going on on a farm it is impossible to take it all in. It’s important to me that I take start taking life slower — according to my dad, Bob Bennett, (96) — to appreciate the little things more so I decided I’d do it by sharing something each day about life on the farm in a blog. Today we are helping release a young mynah bird raised by a human family after it fell out of its nest. They didn’t know it needed to be raised with others of it’s kind, so it’s our job now to reintroduce it to others in the wild. it has no social skills —or interest—when it comes to other birds. Kimo‘s first day out of the aviary (that’s she‘s temporarily being held in here) was today, a sunny and breezy day full of the promise of fair days ahead. She spent most of the time on her adopted human mother’s shoulder but got off a few times to explore the new world. It’s a lot like the first day of kindergarten and it wasn't clear how the other mynahs on the farm would react to her. A few of the tamer ones came to inspect her, and things got off to a good start. We practiced commands like “go in“and “come out” of the aviary, safe places to hang out and the “danger!” call for alerting her to mongoose and cat intruders. With no bird mother to teach them, intelligent birds like mynahs need a little home schooling to be ready for life outdoors. Surprising to most people, it’s not instinctual. They call this a “soft release”. Many birds die after hard releases- that’s why they call it hard- and most places that specialize in this do it the soft way. Kimo’s ‘mother’ had raised her over the past five months and was very worried —though is all smiles now. I told her in a few months it will be “they don’t call, they don’t write, just pop in for a bite to eat then run off with thier friends”. But for now Kimo is still a baby and was happy to go back in the aviary to wait for another day “at school”.