Mockingbird Hill Cottage
As I was walking down the back road to the theater the other day (that is the rear of the outdoor Festival Stage at the end of the road – see the stage lights?), I came upon this:
These hang outside the rear of the Art Museum. I’ve seen hummingbirds and other little birds dining there. Look closely. How many bird feeders do you count?
In an earlier post, I mentioned that my husband assured me that there were buds on my recently planted lilac bush. I didn’t mention that I had asked him to not only look for signs of spring, but to photograph them and send them to me. He did. Imagine my surprise when I noticed in one of the shots that our Christmas wreath was still on the door. You remember that I left for California on January 2, having put all signs of Christmas away. Except for one. In my crazed preparations to leave, I missed the wreath. Don apparently didn’t ‘see’ that it was still there the entire time I was gone, even though he goes in and out of that door repeatedly. I immediately emailed him with an urgent request to ‘take it down!’
Fast forward a few days: Having not yet taken the wreath down despite my urgent request, Don opens the front door and a bird flies in the house. The bird panics and takes cover behind our umbrella stand. After a few moments, the bird flies back out. Don is amazed and shocked. We’ve never had a bird fly in the house before.
Shorty thereafter, Don remembers about the wreath and goes to take it down. There, on the backside of the wreath, he sees that birds have begun building a nest. Right between the wreath and our door. Of course, given how often we go in and out the front door, sometimes with the dogs, there is no way that nest and any eggs would have made it.
Lesson learned: Take your Christmas wreath down right after the New Year. Oh, and don’t leave it up to your husband.
Oh, I saved the sweet beginnings of the birds’ nest – its tucked safely in one of my McCoy planters.
Well, I’m feeling much better, still coughing with chest congestion, but the worst is over. While I was stationed on the sofa in the den, I watched the 3 starling babies get bigger and bigger. I was sure I would see at least one of them fly out of the nest, but they managed to pull off their escape without a witness. My husband and I were left with huge amounts of bird excrement to clean up – on railings, on the furniture, on the porch floor. When we noticed, almost immediately, the parents starting to build a new nest in the same place we had to say no more. We love the miracle of birth, but we are also denied access to the porch for a long period of time while the parents feed the babies and protect the nest. Our dogs cannot go on the porch – and they get really down. So we made the decision to board up all the openings to the eaves – something we wanted to do three years ago. It was all done before any major nest making started and I’m sure our starling friends will find a new nesting place. They do seem shocked though and fly back a couple of times a day to make sure we haven’t opened up the hotel for them.
I managed to finish the painting and refinishing of my cabinet. I used the wonderful tips from Cindy at Romantic Home. Thank you Cindy! I’m very pleased with it. I’m not sure how well the photos show it, but I used an aging technique and it worked well.
Now I have to turn to the less exciting, but necessary painting of our side and front doors. I’m glad to be back blogging!
