A Sad Bird Story

I've been meaning to write about our sad bird story for a while now, but still figuring out how to load all the photos and stuff on this new computer.  Then I read the funniest bird story from my friend Helene over at I'm Living Proof That God Has A Sense of Humor.  It reminded me that I needed to put mine on. Since I can't possibly make my bird story as funny as hers, you might check hers out after reading mine. Besides, mine is sad.

We get a lot of doves in our backyard.  Several times a year some doves try to make a nest in our higher living room windows.  Something must be really appealing about that spot. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) no bird has been able to successfully build a nest there.  The ledge is just too small.  Sometimes we find nest debris all over the patio.  Geesh - the least these birds could do is clean up their mess! They must realize whose home they are at and know that leaving your mess for me to clean up is the norm around here.

So last month another bird made it's attempt.  Before I knew it, the bird was done and wasn't leaving the nest.

At first I thought, "How nice! We will have baby birds!"  Then I thought, "Ugh! We will have baby birds!"  We had them at our last home and forget any sleeping in for however long it takes for them to spread their wings and fly away.  Annoying chirping begins at dawn. Yippee!  And THEN I thought, "That nest is never gonna make it. No nest has made it yet.  Either the eggs are going to plummet to the patio or the babies will."  And I felt bad.

Not much longer and I was in the house when I saw the mommy dove flinch, and that was all it took. The nest fell.  I ran outside and sure enough....cracked eggs on the patio.  The babies were moving their little beaks.  All the kids came out and watched.  They wanted to know why the mother wasn't doing anything.

"Sometimes mommy animals don't do anything to help their young when something weird happens.  Or, maybe she knows there's nothing she can do."  Then the kids looked at me like "Do something mommy! Save the baby birds!"  But I didn't know what could be done.  One of the birds looked like it needed to stay in a little longer. The other actually looked really good.  I wondered if we could save it.

The dove just stayed on the ledge and hopped around like she didn't know what to do either.  I decided that maybe if I moved the whole nest back to the ledge and then put the babies in it she might be able to help.  I scooped up the nest, climbed on our storage box, and tried to put it on the ledge.  That's when the momma dove completely went ballistic on me.  I screamed and the kids all thought that at least THAT was hysterical!  Needless to say I gave up on putting the nest back up.  It was about then that I noticed the baby birds weren't moving anymore.  They were lifeless.

Ashley kept repeating over and over in this woeful voice, "Oh, this is tewible.  This is so tewible."  Poor baby birds.  I bet they only lived about 10 minutes.  The kids got over it quickly at least, but it was a brief lesson in the fragility of life and mother nature.  We actually found some cracked bird eggs a few months ago too from a nest that apparently fell out of our rose bush.

So news flash for the local birds: Do not make a nest near our house. Your odds are not good.

And if I ever see another bird try to make a nest on our ledge again it's gonna see the end of my broom coming at them. Not to be mean but to save them from a stupid mistake!

Now that I've thoroughly depressed you, go on over to my friend Helene's site and read her funny story about the VERY smart birds that invaded her turf!