Nearly Left Behind & Finally First Flight~

Yesterday I shared my time viewing two remaining Yellow-shafted Flickers that remained in the nest hole. The adults can have up to a dozen in a clutch. On Thursday morning, only one chick remained. It yelled and yelled and we only saw it receive a couple of meals that day, as well as Friday. On Saturday morning the noise was constant, the young one yelling, and nothing was being brought to the nest hole. In fact, there was no adult seen around at all for the whole day on Saturday, or Sunday. I was gone to church for a couple of hours and my husby was left in charge of watching the nest hole, for any activity, for he too was growing concerned. It is not unusual for adult birds to slow down on feedings, to lure a young one out of the nest to receive it's next meal. Yet, there was absolutely no vocalization of any adults in the area, and there were no feedings at all on Saturday, or Sunday. I had to leave very early on Monday morning and was to have spent a couple of hours with both my father-in-law as well as my disabled twin sister, which usually takes hours.  Both Dad and Haze knew that my heart and mind were back on Tingsgrove, concerned about a young bird, high up, too high up in a hole that not even a 35 ' ladder would reach. The yelling of the young one had weakened considerably on Sunday afternoon and was even weaker by Monday. I knew that something had to be done, but what... I went down to the nest tree and at the trunk, I began to take a firm stick and knock it against the trunk, making a loud pecking type of noise, along with making the audible sound much like what the adult and chick make. This was done a couple of times and all of a sudden the young chick also became louder and more enthusiastic. This went on for twenty minutes, or more, until my mouth became dry. I was about to give up, when from my left peripheral, I saw an adult come to the nest hole and tears came streaming down my face, happy tears, for the adult had come to feed finally. The young one was quiet for a few minutes and I returned to observe from our deck. With my camera ready for anything that might transpire, one of the adults flew to a tree just behind me and began to yell and before I knew it, out of the hole the young one took it's first marvelous flight and landed with near perfect precision on a tree trunk, just behind our home. By the end of the afternoon, the young one was with it's previous nest mates, already doing a bit of pretend dueling. What a beautiful day it all turned out to be~