Bluebirds

In my post titled "Mockingbird-Part 2", I told the story about a pair of bluebirds who were attempting to nest in a decorator bird house out our front window. They had to do battle with a mockingbird and several sparrows, but emerged triumphant! I had to run to the store to purchase a regulation size bluebird house as the other was too small, plus move it back several feet away from the sidewalk traffic, but, luckily for us, they accepted the house and began the long and laborious task of building their nest.

Their battle is far from over. After laying their eggs, there will be approximately five weeks of fighting off the sparrows and dealing with the fluctuating weather patterns and parasites such as ants and blowfly larvae. But their greatest challenge will surely be accepting the squeals and activity of small children!

I hope you will come back to share this journey of bird watching with us, and cross your fingers that it has a happy ending.

(p.s. It's very rare for bluebirds to include feathers in their nest - it's usually just grasses. But if you look closely at the last photo of the nest, you can just barely make out the presence of three feathers- a quill at 12:00 just under the white dot, a feather at :45 sticking up above the grass, and a white quill about an inch below that. Perhaps symbolically, perhaps the rewards of battle, the feathers belong to ... a mockingbird.)