We’re not having a very successful nesting season. The house finches abandoned their nest before laying any eggs and the Western Bluebird eggs should have already hatched, but haven’t. I’m still hopeful because of something I recently heard from one of my fellow Audubon Board members. She told me that if birds don’t deem conditions optimal to feed their newly-hatched chicks, they will deliberately delay the incubation process by sitting on the eggs less. But to me, conditions are optimal. I left all the leaves and grass clippings so there’s lots of bugs, and the weather, the weather is perfect. But birds know best.
I left for San Francisco and when I came back, all the hummingbirds had already moved on, and with my year-round resident Anna’s Hummingbird, Fearless, having been overthrown and exiled by the others, I’m left with no hummingbirds at all. I felt bad for Fearless, but then again, he shouldn’t have been such a bully.
Things are shifting for me and I don’t know if it’s good or if it’s bad, and I must admit I’m taking the unsuccessful nesting events as foreshadowing. It would have put me at ease some to see that the property is still a thriving ecosystem generating life and promise.
Things are getting strange, but like the birds, I’ll lay low and sit it out until conditions around me are better, and if I have to move on like the Finches who left a fully built nest for something better, then I, too, shall move on.
My Love is for the Birds - Sketches 