nest

One advantage to my lackadaisical (how *does* one do strike-through in html?) that is to say laissez-faire yard management is that we provide habitat for many sorts of animals and birds. We see chipmunks, red squirrels, fox squirrels, and for the last couple of years had a bunny, though I have not seen any bunnies this year. We also see a lot of birds, and in the fall, nests. One year I counted five nests in our suburban backyard, of at least three different kinds. (And no English sparrow nests, thankyouverymuch.)


Sunday I saw this occupied cardinal nest on the back of our garage. It doesn't look very well constructed, compared to the nests of robins or English sparrows.

I have seen this sort of nest in our yard before, but only at the end of the season, so I didn't know whose it was. I see a pair of cardinals all the time, so it makes sense that they nest in our yard.

I hope they can get those babies hatched and launched quickly -- we are scheduled to replace the garage this summer, and their nest would not survive that. We'll drag our feet.............

In other eggy news, there is an egg in the gutter on the edge of our family room roof. My DH hits wiffle (golf) balls at the house from the back yard, so the gutter always has a wiffle ball or two. There is also an egg. I googled for pics of songbird eggs, and found The Provincial Museum of Alberta's terrific subsite on eggs. Thank you, Alberta, this is very nice!

So I hunted first through the songbirds, and didn't find any eggs that were white, skinny, big enough, and of birds I knew we had. I started perusing the other categories, and found mourning doves. Ah. Right. Big enough, right color, right shape, we have mourning doves, and, she said quietly, so as not to hurt their feelings, they don't seem to be the sharpest knives in the drawer, so it isn't a surprise that their egg should be in the gutter with the wiffle balls..........