{"id":19880,"date":"2013-11-10T06:09:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T13:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=19880"},"modified":"2013-11-10T06:09:22","modified_gmt":"2013-11-10T13:09:22","slug":"kite-string-yet-another-death-trap-for-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/10\/kite-string-yet-another-death-trap-for-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"Kite String – Yet Another Death Trap For Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning – these two photos are not easy to look at, especially if you love birds.\u00a0 If you are sensitive and\/or squeamish about seeing photos of suffering and dead birds you may want to click out of this post without proceeding further.\u00a0 Please, no complaints about the nature of these\u00a0images – you have been warned…<\/em><\/p>\n

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Several years ago the neighbor kids in the home behind and adjoining my back yard would occasionally fly kites from their own yard.\u00a0 Given the small\u00a0size of their lot and the many mature and very large trees in the neighborhood it was a kite-disaster waiting to happen.\u00a0 I had no inkling at the time that it would also be a disaster for a bird.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the kite string snagged between two trees – one in another adjoining neighbors yard and another at the far side of mine.\u00a0 The kids were able to retrieve the kite but it left a long section of the string stretched tight between\u00a0the two trees directly above the fence line in my back yard and about 35′ off the ground.\u00a0 It was there for several days and it was out of my reach so I mostly ignored it.\u00a0 I never even thought of it as a potential danger to birds.<\/p>\n

I should have…<\/p>\n

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\"American<\/a><\/p>\n

Very early one May morning (I was about to leave on a bird photography trip)\u00a0I turned the back yard lights on and walked outside to check the progress of my vegetable garden, only to hear a\u00a0fluttering sound coming from above me in the pre-dawn near darkness.\u00a0\u00a0Within a few minutes there was enough light that I could tell it was an American Robin snagged in\u00a0the kite string.\u00a0 It was still struggling and it was a\u00a0sight to break one’s heart.<\/p>\n

At first I couldn’t figure out how to rescue the bird.\u00a0 I used my lens to try to see how seriously it was entangled and even though it was still quite dark (much darker than it appears in this photo, I’ve increased exposure during processing) I could see well enough to determine that\u00a0this robin was likely\u00a0doomed unless I did something.<\/p>\n

I found my own piece of string and a\u00a0heavy metal washer in my garage so I tied the washer to the end of my string\u00a0and after several attempts\u00a0was able to throw the washer over the kite string.\u00a0 The kite string was very long\u00a0(it stretched roughly 90′ across the entire length of\u00a0the boundary of our back yards) so as I pulled\u00a0on my own string the kite string stretched considerably before it broke.<\/p>\n

When it did\u00a0finally break the robin was flung high into the larger tree in my\u00a0other neighbors back yard.\u00a0 Even though by now it was relatively light I couldn’t see or hear\u00a0the robin\u00a0through all the leaves so I figured (hoped) the bird had already flown off and would be fine so I left on my photography trip.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/a><\/p>\n

When the leaves of the tree had fallen in November I spotted this heart-breaking sight high up in the tree.<\/p>\n

All that winter I could see what was\u00a0left of this bird through the window as I stood at the kitchen sink.\u00a0 It was a\u00a0stark and constant\u00a0reminder that if I’d thought of the kite string as a danger to birds and\u00a0broken it in a timely fashion this bird would not have suffered and died.<\/p>\n

And that’s why I’m making this post – perhaps we all should be more pro-active in anticipating hazards to birds.\u00a0 These days they need all the help they can get.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Several years ago the neighbor kids in the home behind and adjoining my back yard would occasionally fly kites from their own yard. Given the small size of their lot and the many mature and very large trees in the neighborhood it was a kite-disaster waiting to happen. I had no inkling at the time that it would also be a disaster for a bird.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1734,334,8],"tags":[1735,1737,815,1738,1736],"class_list":["post-19880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-robin","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","tag-american-robin-2","tag-kite","tag-robin","tag-string","tag-turdus-migratorius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5aE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}