Next nest.

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of birds, I guess. 

Yessir, a birdie has built a nest under the deck, same as last year. This has happened periodically in the time we've owned the house, but last year the results seemed to be disastrous -- for the bird, not us. As I blogged at the time, the constant interruption caused by bringing the dog into the yard caused the bird to fly off the nest in panic many times, which may have caused the egg to be too cold to develop. Eventually nest and egg were abandoned.

A non-eggtity.

This bird seemed braver at first, so brave I thought it might go for my eyes if I got too close. But no, we sidled up to it and it flew off. It didn't return until after we were gone, and as it took Tralfaz his usual DMV-like dawdling to do his business, that egg was eggsposed for some time.

Ah, well. The kingdom of the birds is hardly a peaceable one. Birds attack each other, go after each other's eggs, fly into windows. The raptors kill small mammals. (They're beautiful while they do it, but still -- Oy! such killing.)

So birds have it tough. Some birds are tough enough to take it. If pigeons were as nervous about noise as my bird, they'd never survive Manhattan.

Come to think of it, I've never seen a pigeon nest. Maybe they spontaneously generate.

Regardless, I would like to apologize to any birds, except chickens and ducks and turkeys and other delicious birds, for making their lives tougher than it might normally be. I confess that I eat eggs, and have indirectly encouraged others to eat eggs, but only chicken eggs. Please stay away from my face. Thank you.