My Life Is For The Birds (Please Click On Pictures)

I have three families of birds which I am keeping a close eye on.

One of course is the chicken family and this post is not about them although thank-you for asking, they are doing quite well this morning and I will mention that Feral Carol seems to be incorporating herself into the flock although she does not go in to roost with them at night. Yet.

One of my bird families is the wren family which made their crazy nest on top of the old mounted tarpon on my back porch right over a door which we go in and out of many times a day.




The babies have obviously hatched because the parents spend all day long going in and out of the dog door and flying up to the nest with juicy bugs in their beaks. I have not heard the babies but I know they are there. It seems impossible that I haven't gotten a good picture of Mr. or Mrs. Wren lately, seeing as how they fly right by me and even light on the table I am using all day long. But you know- by the time you pick up the camera, they're off about their business again.
I love having them here but I am gravely worried. We have been through this before and if I am not here the moment the babes leave the nest, there is a good chance the dogs will get them all as they make their first clumsy attempts to fly on the porch, hitting walls and then the ground. Buster, especially, is good at catching these babies.
If I am here when the parents coax them out of the nest, I can move the dogs into the house and open up the screen door so that the birds can make their way out safely. If I am not, well, a whole lot of nurturing and raising went on for naught and that makes me so very sad.
Two years ago it took the parents AND me all day long to finally get the last babies off the porch. Just as with human babies, some of the young seem to get it right away and zoom outdoors while others cling to the screen in terror, the parents on the other side with the biggest bugs they can find in their mouths, imploring them to come on!

We shall see what happens. As much as I would love to use the excuse of having to stay on my back porch until the baby birds leave the nest, it is not really feasible.

The other family I am watching is a bluebird couple. A few years ago Mr. Moon built bluebird boxes on the back fence and this year two of the birds used one of them. We could not have been more pleased if Brad and Angelina had knocked on the door, wanting to know if they could give birth in the Panther Room.


You can lift the lid off the top of the boxes to look inside and I want to desperately but I know that would be the wrong thing to do.

But this morning I took the camera out and waited quietly and patiently to see if I could get a few shots of mama and daddy. Telescopic lens required. Also the ability to stand still with four mosquitoes at once feeding hungrily off my arms. And a few on my legs.


They are so beautiful, these little patches of sky with wings.



I feel that their presence is a charm for goodness right here in my backyard. Of course, since they are already outside I will not be needed when the babies come out of their nest. I always wonder what the next step is in baby-bird raising. Do the parents gather them all on one branch at night until they are big enough to go off into the world on their own?
I do not know.
But I know that while this raising and feeding are going on, it is a cheerful and lovely thing to watch.

And even when the wild bird families take off to go wherever they go when this part of their year is over, I will have my chickens to observe and learn from.

And once again, I must admit that yes, people become obsessed with birds as they grow older and in my case, I am not fighting the process at all, but am embracing and learning as much as I can from these winged creatures with whom I share my tiny little little world.

A Sight To See

Every time I woke up last night it was raining. That gentle, steady sort of rain that gets the job done, soaking the ground and going straight to the still-tight buds of the dogwoods and azaleas and the roots of the oak trees.
That same rain must have called up the bugs of the dirt, too, because when I got up this morning and went outside to feed the cats and get the newspaper I could barely believe what was going on in my side yard. There were hundreds of chirping birds: brilliant cardinals, fat robbins, doves, crows and even the guinea hens from next door, walking as they do in a line, chuckling in their rusty tongue as they marched along.
But it wasn't just birds I was seeing. There were squirrels perched on stumps who would suddenly leap down and run across the yard and skitter up the pecan trees like they were playing some sort of child's game of I-Dare-Ya.
The horses and chickens and goats next door were out, strutting around in their respective pens, looking sassy and glad to be alive and I swear it was like a damn Disney movie and I expected to see a lion and a lamb stroll by together any moment, or at the very least, Bambi and his mother, tentatively nosing their way into the midst of all this animal life, nibbling at the wild violets and Florida betony growing crazy-green here in the middle of winter in North Florida.