2586 The birds

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A line on “Criminal Minds“, 09/09/09:
“Bad news stops you for a while, then you move on. Hope is paralyzing.”

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I forgot. There is one thing I want to write about, to keep for however long. It's about the birds on my front porch. It's very sad.

For the past five years or more, a pair of birds have been raising chicks on my porch lights. I looked them up in my bird book one year, but I've forgotten what they are. Very small round body, long narrow beak, a small crest on the top back of their heads.

The male always arrived first in the spring and staked out the porch. The female would arrive a bit later. They always built their first nest on top of the light to the left of the front door, and there were always four eggs. When that brood was all grown up in mid-summer, they'd build a second nest on the light to the right, and raise a second brood of four. Late summer and into the fall they'd take their vacation, bug hunting in the shrubs near the porch and sleeping on the wire intertwined hearts that hang from the porch ceiling,

This meant I couldn't use my porch lights all summer. I didn't want to cook the eggs or the chicks. I thought about wrapping wire or something around the lights to discourage them, but then decided I liked them there.

Last year, in late summer, I found the male fluttering desperately around a space between the house wall and the cement porch floor. He flew away when I got close, and I could hear chirping and scrabbling down in the crack. The female had somehow fallen in there, had gotten up behind the siding, and couldn't get out.

I tried to figure out how to help, but there was nothing I could do.

The chirping and scrabbling went on for perhaps two days, then it stopped.

The male sat on the intertwined hearts alone, and finally flew south.

This spring the male arrived early, and staked out the porch.

All summer he has been sitting alone on the intertwined hearts.

I cry a little every time I see him. He's out there right now, and tears are running down my face.
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