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Feature
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Saturday, May 17, 2008, 3:00 AM
A lesson from bluebirds By Jane Wood | Daily Times Columnist I stated in an earlier column that the first bluebird house we erected on our farm was placed some distance from our own house. Each year we moved it until it was within 4 feet of our breakfast room window. How exciting it was to watch the adult birds and nesting activity at close range. During mating season we enjoyed the flash of blue wings as a pair of bluebirds placed pine straw in the house. When the neatly woven nest was complete, Mrs. Blue laid one light blue egg each day until there were 3 to 5, then incubation began. We marked our calendar; hatching would occur in 13 to 16 days. Mr. Blue delivered meals to his wife regularly. He perched nearby and serenaded her with his sweet, yet poignant song. When the eggs hatched, we telephoned birth announcements to city friends. We invited them to come see our new babies, which we displayed by lifting the front panel of the birdhouse when parent birds were away hunting for vittles. While the nestlings were maturing, we got to check out the meals Mom and Pop Blue offered -- moths, worms, grasshoppers and sometimes something unidentifiable. Feathered parents seemed to know we were watching; they'd pose a moment before entering their house with a wiggly morsel dangling from their beak. As solo time approached, we became as anxious as if the young "pilots to be" were ours. Then one year our bluebird paradise changed. It was during a first nesting back in the 1980s. The parent birds were attending their newly hatched brood. We were watching and enjoying the process. One morning I became aware that the parent bluebirds weren't entering and exiting their house as usual to feed their near fledglings. I felt a twinge of apprehension. I investigated, slowly raising the hinged birdhouse door. I expected to see a wad of blue-gray down and bright yellow beaks. I saw gray alright -- dark gray, nearly black -- and it was motley and coiled. I turned away, sickened by the cruelty in nature. My question was answered when time came for a second nesting. One morning Mrs. Blue perched atop her once ravaged house with a bit of pine straw in her beak. I wiped a tear from my eye when Mr. Blue joined her, a length of straw in his beak also. Even birds know that life must go on ... Hope affirms life and love. Woven together, the cycle is never ending.
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