spring fever

i was just over at the blueberry patch, reading about Mr. E's squirrel building a spring nest. squirrels aren't common in my neighborhood. they're not popular with my neighbor. he has a series of sheds full of collected stuff that the squirrels seem to appreciate far more than his neighbors (hush my mouth!) do. so he wait for them (that is, he waits for the squirrels... i haven't heard of him laying in wait for neighbors..... YET) with a b.b. gun and plays sniper.

but i do have a lot of birds. one in particular, that Mr. E's story brought to mind, is a gentleman robin, who, devoid of a spouse, had far too much time on his hands.

my house, a renovated church, has a deck wrapping around the steeple, at the second storey level. the front entry to the house is, of course, on the ground level of the steeple. there's a big supporting beam for the deck running overhead, as one walks under the deck, to come in the house. the joists for the deck rest on this beam, forming a dozen or so open ended boxes under the deck floor, along the beam.

Mr. Robin, who i think must have been very new to home building, proceeded to build a nest in EACH of these spaces between deck and beam. Waynorth can be a very windy place, in season, and i remember that spring being particularly blustery, so his efforts were blown away, and rebuilt, and blown away, and rebuilt, many times... all dozen of them.

i don't know how he managed to find the time, but, between building and rebuilding a dozen nests (no Mrs. Robin in sight, by the way) he hung around my kitchen window, which had a scaffold in front of it, as the roof was being refinished. he would stalk back and forth on the scaffold, glaring at me, as i worked in the kitchen, then, without warning, he'd throw himself at me, and bounce off the window. there was a window in the living room he also favored for this passtime. it was quite unnerving, and very startling when unexpected, and it went on for months. i called him The Wonky Robin (and other less gentle things when he'd just startled the daylights out of me) the windows were filthy from his mucky little feet and feathers, and never stayed clean long after a wash, so i gave up trying to wash the ouside of them at all.

and for all these months, the nests remained empty.

then, one day, he was gone.

a week or so later, i noticed a pair of robins completing a nest on the lamp attached to the wall of my neighbor's garage (not the squirrel shooter, thankfully) i'm sure it was my former adversary, having finally found a wife.

and she didn't like ANY of the homes he'd already built, so she insisted that they build ANOTHER, to her specifications.

i think they were very happy together, and, late as they began, managed to raise a nest of lovely babies before the snow fell.