I love birds. I hate bugs, which is why I love birds. They look at bugs as a culinary treat, whch works out fine with me. I'm not talking ladybugs, they're just cute. And I know we need bees, I just don't NEED them stinging me. I prefer that they just go do their little honey making jobs and whatever wasps are good for. Wasps are one of the few things in life I'm terrified of.
Back to the birds. For some reason, our house has becme a great hangout for the birds' building projects here this year. There is NO housing crisis here as far as they're concerned. OR, maybe we are now considered low-budget housing, or maybe our fowl-weather friends offered some of those subprime mortgages here.
Okay, the point is they love it here and have invited all their friends, and apparently extended family.
At last count, there were 5 birds nest under our deck, nestled between rafters. On our front porch, we have played bed and breakfast for 3 different bird families.
The latest is just about ready to send the kids off to college, because they're stuffed in there like little sausages and yell at just about everything. So I think they're going to be let go real soon. Unless they follow the trend of grown kids hanging around their parents' home due to finances, the food, or having their laundry done.
The nests on our front porch have been in 3 different locales, none of which were convenient for us, nor for the birds.
The first one, a single family style home was built right outside my parents' front door, inside a planter that was meant for, well, plants. Each time one of my parents tried to leave the house the mama robin would get irate and squawk and flounce around like she was making the mortgage payments on the house. Several times, while my dad was just trying to enjoy the out of doors, the mama robin put on such a production that he'd come back in the house. Same with my mom, even though she told the mama robin she had nothing to worry about. Seems mama robin had some trust issues.
Which, may have some foundation to them. Since the next two nests to appear, in rapid succession, were one each in my mom's hanging ferns. Mom loves the ferns, and tries to take very good care of them, so how was she to know there were families in them when she watered them, oh so carefully. My mom's not real tall, and couldn't see anything in the ferns when she watered. I don't want mom to feel any worse than she does, but the next day I saw the little guys had little bird goggles, snorkels and swimmies on.
We're thankful for several things:
That the sun did not become so hot as to boil the water mom watered her plants with,when they were eggs
That they did not drown after they were born (hatched just sounds so politically incorrect)
That PETA does not know our address
That our cat may talk a "big talk" but is basically afraid of most things, so that he at no time tried to make any of the birds his meal
These are truly things to be thankful for--at least for the birds.
All I can say is, as I'm sitting here scratching my newest mosquito bites, if they don't soon start earning their keep in bug-eating, we may not be so hospitable next year! Although mom has already been thinking of next year. Please see attached picture.
