Saturday, March 20, 2010

SIGNS OF SPRING

Yesterday looking out the window at the front of the house as I sat at my desk in the office, I watched some birds come and go. Obviously some of the birds were simply passing through because the lovely little red-headed finches are not sights I generally see filling the tree out front. As I looked outside it seemed they decorated the previously bare tree like Christmas balls, adding touches of rosy-tan color here and there against the blue background of sky. Few of the usual birds were evident yesterday so where had those grackles and tiny brown sparrows gone? To my delight, some members of the bird families who visit more frequently, did arrive yesterday. Each time a mockingbird comes, I quietly beg, "Please build a nest in my tree," but so far my plea has fallen on deaf ears. Maybe I should hang a "Mockingbird Nest Space For Rent" sign on the tree. The visiting mockers always show keen interest in our shrubbery, the crape myrtle bushes, hop along the low window sill and look inside, and they try out the tree branches. Yesterday there was a more serious renter appearance to the mockingbird who was in our tree and either she returned several times, sent her husband to look, or perhaps both. Hope holds high that soon mockingbird songs will permeate the air around the front of our house. Therefore I went to bed with visions of the need to order a sign that says, "Caution: Mockingbirds Nesting"
"Why the need for a sign?" you ask?
I went to bed not only with visions of mockingbird songs coming from the nest in the front yard tree but the possibility of a protective mama and daddy mockingbird also coming from that front yard tree to bombard some unsuspecting visitor coming up our front walk that is lined up not very far from the tree.
Okay, I was having a sleepless night by this time. Thoughts were bombarding my mind more than any mockingbird ever thought of using in attacking a predator at its nest: Do we see if we know anyone who would like to or who can make a nice sign and should it be one to hang securely from a low branch of the tree or pound into the ground? Pounding the sign set on a stake into the ground certainly seems more appealing to me but then another vision (they come rapidly with sleeplessness) of the point of that stake being pounded into the ground and instead of it's going directly into the ground, it's pointedly landing dead-center and bursting one of the lawncare sprinkler system water pipes. A gushing spray of water is not the kind of bird bath that would seem welcoming to our new friends in their nest in the nearby tree, so you see, I have to settle the details regarding all these signs of spring before the mockingbirds move in.

1 comment:

  1. Well ... hmmmm ... maybe you need signs marking out the sprinkler systems too! Winter made a return appearance in Oklahoma today! Blech!

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