April 29, 2015

We've been walking most every evening for a while now.  I wish I could say it's made me svelte; it hasn't.  It has, however, been a nice way to talk about our day, see our neighbors and watch spring erupt.

Our house is on stilts because of the marsh, and there is a wood lattice in the front of the house that climbing roses adhere to.  Jed rides his bike while we walk, and he parks it right behind the lattice on one end.  You can see through the lattice to the front yard, and last night while he was putting his bike away, Jed saw a cardinal fly away from the climbing roses to a nearby tree.  Thinking that was strange, he came upstairs onto the front porch and looked around the area at the end of the house where he saw the bird, and discovered a nest in the climbing roses.  There were 4 perfect little eggs nestled in there. We were so excited!

This morning he and I went back to get a picture of the nest and in the process disturbed both the mother and father.  The mother fluttered around so that I couldn't get a picture of her, but I did get a picture of the father settled on a branch in the same tree he was in last night.  Interestingly, we couldn't get a clear view of the nest this morning...it was as if the parents had fluffed up the leaves to hide it from view.  But what we did see amazed us...we could only see one egg clearly, but the one to the left of it in this picture looks like it is broken in half, and Jed thinks he saw a baby. 

The last time we had a nest we could watch, a squirrel or some other critter got into it and we only found little bits of the babies left behind.  We were heartbroken.  This time, we're thinking the nest might be safe from intruders because the climbing roses wouldn't be sturdy enough to support the weight of a squirrel if it tried to get into the nest.  We're hoping to watch these eggs hatch and see the babies grow into fledglings that eventually leave the nest to make their own homes.