Oh, I am so delighted! This morning, I discovered that a pair of wrens are building in our wren house, which has been totally unoccupied since moving here 5 years ago.

Why am I so excited? Well, it might be because, as you know if you read my blog, I love birds and had a great time watching a Mama Robin raise a brood of baby robins from egg to flight. Having a nesting pair of wrens in plain view of the window over my kitchen sink will be such a delight!

But it's more than that. Hearing the wren's call and seeing the Mama and Papa hopping around the house brought back a flood of wonderful memories.

When the boys were small, nearly every spring we would get a phone call from my mother-in-law, Carolyn, inviting us over for home made cookies and fresh squeezed lemonade. When we got there, she'd have lawn chairs set up in the driveway behind the house and a couple pairs of binoculars at the ready, because "the wrens are building!"

And so we sat. And listened. And watched. And enjoyed every minute of the day, treasuring up memories--for the boys, of wrens and cookies and lemonade--for me, of what it means to be a grandma.

With the birth of my own grandson three weeks ago, I have thought of those days so often, imagining what it will be like to share small joys with Elliott. How wonderful it is to me and what a delightful blessing from the Lord that, after five years of an empty wren house, a pair of wrens would choose to nest here now that I've got a grandson of my own who will someday sit in the driveway eating cookies and drinking lemonade and watching the birds.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Since I was out in the yard snapping pictures, I decided to explore the cardinals' nesting bush. 

I was surprised to find two eggs in the nest.  (I wasn't surprised to find a silver maple seed!) 

We've also had a Mama and Papa Cardinal nesting in a bush by our tall fence.  They are much more aggressive than the robins, so we've left them alone.  I've watched them from the window over my kitchen sink, flying in and out--feeding hungry babies.

This afternoon I spotted this little sweetie in the grass when I had Ivy out in the side yard.  

 

 

 

Isn't she just the cutest little thing?   I think she's a she; after all, she has a little hair-do.

 

Papa Cardinal watched my every move. 

I took this one yesterday morning, just before this guy flew away. 

 

 

All day yesterday, there were two. 

 

This morning there was one.  Doesn't he look like the cat that ate the canary? 

 

By 8 o'clock, he was gone.

It's very quiet.  I miss them. 

Not long after I posted up the most recent pictures of the baby robins, I heard a loud commotion and cacaphony of shrieks and angry twitters around the nesting tree.

I got out to the porch in time to see the Mama and Papa Robin chasing a small mob of sparrows away from the nest.  When things calmed down (which took several long minutes) there were only three babies in the nest and no sight of the other one down below. 

Did he fly away?  Is he lying beneath the lilies planted under the tree with a broken neck?  Is he hiding somewhere in the bushes?  I have no idea.  I keep looking for him but to no avail.

Sniff.

Marlin Perkins told me there would be days like this. . . 

Over the last two days, the birdies have developed some pretty impressive flight feathers and I have seen the Mama Robin dangling fresh worms over the nest and the evidence of birdy poo around the rim of the nest, so it won't be long until the nest is empty.  I haven't yet caught any of them perched on the edge of the nest, but I suspect I shall today.

 

Poor Ivy is worn out from fussing over our temporary visitors.  She hasn't really been able to relax since the birds hatched.  Every time she goes to the porch, she peers out of the side window; every time she's in the yard, she gravitates to the birdy tree; everytime they peep (which is every little whip stitch) she is up and investigating.   Even her brief moments of napping are facing the window--just in case. . .

I will miss them.  I'll probably have a cleaner house and the laundry might get done (you can't watch birds from the basement!) but our house will seem a little less interesting, a little less inspiring, a little less hospitable.

Unless, of course, Mama returns with another brood.  It could happen! 

The babies look almost like their mother now.  Soon, they will fly away. 

I've called this big guy Baby Huey because he's always on top of the other ones who are smooshed and crunched into the bottom of the nest.  Can you see the three beaks in a semi-circle in the front of the nest?

The quality of these photos leave a lot to be desired--after all, I am shooting through a dirty window and then cropping them in order to zero in on the nest.  But you get the idea. . .

 

 

The peeps are getting feisty!  Mama keeps trying to settle her great, feathery bulk over them but they keep popping up around the edges!  I actually saw her push one little sassy head back under with her birdy foot!

I've rearranged the furniture on the porch so that I can sidle up as closely as I can to the window to take pictures.  I'm hoping to get a picture of her feeding them soon!

In the meantime, other than nest spying, I'm getting very little else done today.  

More later. 

Random musings on a sunny, Sunday morning: 

I haven't seen my trifocals for over a week now.  I wasn't too worried when they were first missing because I misplace them all the time.  I was pretty sure they were in the house somewhere and figured they'd turn up in the linen closet or under a chair or some other strange place but I'm beginning to think I've lost them.  I'm good at losing things.  If I lose my bifocals, I am sunk.

Mama Bird is busily feeding her babes.  Papa Bird is an ever present presence in the yard now.  One of them swooped me when I was weeding under the nesting tree yesterday.  I'm thinking it must have been Papa because Mama isn't particularly bothered by me.  Here she is this morning, sitting on her fuzzy gray chicks.  (I peeked in the nest while she was out pulling worms but by the time I came back with my camera, she was back on the nest) As you can tell by the movement of the camera, Papa wasn't nearly as tolerant of my intrusion into the privacy of his family. 

 

I (well, Tom) made a new bed for my shasta daisies yesterday.  They weren't thriving beside the sidewalk where they've been for the past two summers.  I think they don't like all the snow piled atop them during the winter.  Hopefully, they'll like the new digs better.

 

See these?  They're not weeds!  They are tiny lavendar plants.  I'm going to leave them alone for a while and then transplant them when they get a little bigger.

 

The spiderwort is just starting to bloom this morning. 

 

The girls like to sleep on the porch in the mornings.  It's like a green house with the sun streaming in the windows.

 

I forgot about this picture I took of the cloud formations on Friday evening.  Don't they look like cotton candy? 

 

We got a new super duper printer for my business yesterday so this afternoon we'll be re-arranging the whole office to accomodate this new piece of equipment.  It always makes me nervous to mess around with the computer cables and cords.  If you don't hear from me, you'll know why. . . 

I need to go get ready for church now!  Have a wonderful Lord's Day! 

Mama is not happy with me. . .  

Can you find Mama?  It's been two years since she nested here, but she's settled right in as if she remembers me.  She is even calmer that she was before; I can poke the camera right into the tree to take pictures of her.  I even peeked into the nest while I had Ivy with me on the leash and she never batted an eye.

We'll see what it's like once the eggs hatch.

This is a very busy week, so posts are going to be few and far between.  Here's a preview of something I'm working on.

 

This is a first, quick run through. I've made some choices and some changes since this first rendering, as always.  I think I've already lettered it four or five times, making adjustments and adding color.  I really like this project--I may have it hanging in my own home eventually. 

A week ago, "a very busy couple of house finches had been very busily investigating the two grapevine wreaths that hang on the windows on either side of the front of my house."

They (literally) messed around for a few days, industriously building then destroying then rebuilding nests in both wreaths.   But by Wednesday or Thursday I stopped seeing them.  The only remnants of their work are two piles of debris under the wreaths and a little bit of Easter grass woven into one. 

I was sad because I love watching birds, especially when they are raising a family and I was looking forward to seeing the finches raise their brood from egg to fledgling.

Friday was a rainy, deary day but my spirits rose as I watched a Mama Robin build a new nest on the site of the one I had chronicled on my blog two years ago.   I was comforted.  Even though the finches decided to take up residence elsewhere, we'd have robins again.  All that day, every so often, I would take a few minutes to watch Mama building her nest.  She started with twigs, then moved on to muddy, messy grasses.  She brought her sopping wet bundle to the nest, deposited it in the bottom, then hopped in and tamped it down with her fast birdy feet, keeping her tail erect and out of the way of the mud.  Eventually, she topped it all off with a layer of drier grass, woven into concentric lines.

Then she left and we never saw her for the rest of the weekend.  I looked into the nest yesterday and there were no eggs.  

This morning, I decided to take a photo of the pristine nest, for its construction truly is a thing of beauty.  Lo, and behold!  There she sat, on the nest, as still as a stone, tucked amidst the blooming.

I think she may be the same Mama Robin as before because she did not swoop away from the nest, but tolerated me as I poked my camera into her safe haven, as one who had become used to my periodic invasions of her privacy.