A bad day for the birds

Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne’er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

(5 tiny bluebird eggs / Julie Cook / 2015)

If you’ve followed much of cookiecrumbs for any length of time, then you know I love my birds.
Not the Atlanta Falcons or Hawks mind you nor some sort of pet parakeet but rather those beautifully wild birds which frequent my yard.
I just love all the various wild birds that either call my yard their permanent home or those more transient species who just happen by on a short lay over as they travel onward to wherever it is they go. . .

I enjoy the commotion on the feeders, especially after a recent replenishing.
I relish those fleeting occasional sightings of some rare bird making an impromptu pitstop.

From hummingbird to hawk, I love my birds.

Yet sadly there have been three incidents as of late which have left me rather troubled and to be honest, quite sad.

I realize that Nature is Nature–wild and free so to speak.
There’s that whole food chain thing going on. . .
The survival of the fittest. . .
That whole eat or be eaten mentality. . .
All out taking place in that yard of mine.
Be it raccoon, copperhead, rat snake, possum, mole, armadillo, coyote, bobwhite, bobcat, buzzard, cardinal, robin, turtle, lizard, chipmunk. . .living harmoniously is certainly a very fine line.

First my bluebirds.
We’ve had a family of bluebirds here in our yard for as long as we’ve lived in this house–a good 16 years. Offsprings return each year and continue raising generation after generation.
I have several boxes up for their choice of nesting.
Last year, on Mother’s day of all days, you may remember the whole bird box incident with my husband and how Mrs Bluebird did not have a happy mother’s day. I was shocked they decided to actually come back, giving us a second chance, but we won’t relive that little trauma drama right now. . .

I had watched with keen interest this Spring as mom and dad bluebird were first busy building a nest in the box of choice and then secondly how they worked in tandem to feed the hatchlings.

Yet oddly one strange day, all was silent. There was no activity of the usual flying back and forth. No little rising crescendo chorus greeting the latest tasty morsel of worm or bug delivered for meal time—a never ending mealtime.

I watched the box for a couple of days before taking my chance. . .I eased up to the box, twisting the latch to check inside.
I found nothing.
It was still too soon for the babies to have “flown” the proverbial coop—I fretted that a raccoon or snake or feral cat had had it’s way one dark and sinister night with my wee blue family. . .

Fast forward a couple of weeks when, once again, I notice a bevy of activity. Mom sitting with her tiny head poking out of the hole as if she was on patrol as Dad made the deliveries of tasty takeout.
This went on for about two weeks, when once again, out of the blue, nothing.
No noise,
No commotion,
No movement,
No mom.
No dad.

So once again after watching the box intently for several days, I slowly inched my way to the tree, lifting the latch. . .this time, resting gently in place were 5 beautifully blue eggs. Alone.
Mom and Dad had left the box. . .
But way?

The other seemingly tragic event came around the same time as the first bluebird batch disappearance.
There was a mockingbird who had built a nest in close proximity to the bluebirds box, with its nest perched up in a Tea Olive tree.
Mother and dad mockingbird were fiercely protective and equally as busy as Mr and Mrs Bluebird.
Mom had laid several beautiful eggs that hatched into several tiny little balls of fluffy down.

(mockingbird eggs / Julie Cook /2015)

(the tiny mockingbird fledglings / Julie Cook / 2015)

Yet oddly, their nest grew quiet at the same time as the bluebirds. . .which certainly raised my suspicions as to what was taking place in the cloak of darkness.

Lastly the final insult to injury for my beloved birds. . .

A couple of weeks ago I had shared a post featuring our new redheaded woodpecker family.
The first couple of these gorgeous birds to call our yard home. They were truly magnificent birds to watch purely because of their striking colors. A brilliant red head offset by the white and black body feathers.
I was so proud that this pair of beautiful birds had opted to call my yard home.

Their range was rather wide as I would often see them flying off to the woods across the street at the back of the neighbor’s pasture. They began to enjoy sitting on our black fence with runs the length of our property along the road. I imagined the pickings for bugs must have been ideal along the fence.

Last week, at the end of one long hot day finally returning home from Dad’s, I turned to pull into the driveway when I noticed what appeared to be a dead bird lying on its back in the middle of the driveway. Immediately I could hear my own voice echoing in the car “NO, NO, NO. . .”
Stopping the car to investigate further, my initial assumption was sadly was confirmed—-it was one of the woodpeckers.

(my beautiful redheaded woodpecker is no more / Julie Cook / 2015)

From my observation I noted some blood around the beak and sadly surmised that the bird perhaps had flown out and up at the same time a car had came barreling down the road.

I brought the bird down to the house and took it out in the back to bury it.

I always feel privileged when I am afforded a glimpse into the lives of the animals, birds, reptiles, fish that I share my little piece of the planet with. . .I’ve always felt as if God has given me a tiny precious gift each encounter, each observation. . .be it here in my own backyard or along the shores of the ocean or in the wilds of Alaska. . .Those created creatures both majestic and beautiful, wild and free. . .creatures I am tasked with, as a steward of the planet and created creature myself who God entrusted with responsibility, to care for, honor and respect. . .

I am thankful for their presence in my world as they remind me of God’s grace as well as joy—as He must have taken great pleasure in their creation. . .

Here’s to my birds—may better days grace your horizons. . .

I fear I am party to a murder most fowl……

“Murder is always a mistake – one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner”
Oscar Wilde

I don’t know if I can talk about this after dinner or at anytime….I feel very badly.

Once again my cliche of a life is rolling along with “the best laid plans…” phrase, again, rearing its ugly head. Meaning that my intentions are indeed truly good and noble with me thinking that I am certainly doing a good thing.. when all of a sudden, those good intentions turn and just as suddenly, head south…..

I have several bird feeders in our front yard dangling from the oak tree. The oak tree is sick, but I don’t want to talk about that. If the oak tree is as sick as I think it may be, it may have to be removed, lest it fall. But I don’t want to talk about that. It’s been losing its leaves all summer as if we live in perpetual Fall…but they don’t turn colors, they simply turn dingy and die. I love the two twin oaks that stand sentinel in front of our house. Our house was built around the two trees…without one of them or even worse, life without both tress, would be terrible….I don’t want to talk about it…..

So these bird feeders that are dangling from the oak tree that I don’t want to talk about, draw a plethora of birds to my world. I love watching the birds. The smaller birds, the various finches and the nuthatches, barely move when I come out to fill up the feeders. The woodpeckers, the bluejays, the mocking birds, the cardinals, the visiting grosbeaks, the wrens, the blue birds, as well of a wealth of out of towners, coupled with my growing bevy of mourning doves, all keep my front yard hopping in a sea of flight and fancy.

Our sweet Peaches, our 4 pound orange fluff ball of a cat, is so docile and accepted by the birds that she can sit in the grass under the tree as the birds feed on and under the tree, giving her a no never mind as they go about the task of eating me out of house and home.

Imagine my alarm as my husband came in last evening from work with the words…
“I just witnessed a murder”
“WHAT?!”
“Yep, you are one bird less”

Once I recover my composure that he was not speaking of some horrendous human sort of crime, I immediately thought of Peaches and how she must have committed the unthinkable against one of her “friends”
“Peaches?” I ask timidly..
“No, the culprit is a hawk”
“WHAT?!”
“I told you that the hawks were eyeing an orange meatball just waiting to swoop down in order to snatch up Peaches!”

But it seems the perpetrator to this horrific crime was not one of the larger hawks, not the red tail nor broad wing which screech and circle overhead as I’m out working in the yard–eyeing both me and my cat. No, this fowl on fowl attack came from a sparrow hawk…the stealthy little dive bombing predator, the Japanese Zero or the German Messerschmitt of the bird world, small, quick, agile and deadly. The predator who is not much bigger than my larger birds in the local community of which he has obviously been eyeing.

My husband was pulling down the driveway when he saw something black quickly dart into the oak tree, the sick, sad oak tree that I don’t want to talk about… and just as suddenly the black dart drops from the tree, like a rock, with deadly speed and force onto one of my unsuspecting mourning doves. My husband reported that the little hawk was not much bigger than the poor victim.

I dash out the backdoor to the yard. There, a few feet beyond the full shadow of the tree, was a strewn pile of feathers. Lots of feathers, more so than I could capture with a single image with my camera. A terrible thing.

I am sad. I feel as if I have aided and abetted this criminal and his horrendous fowl on fowl crime. I lured the victims in with the dangling feeders, filling them up, day after day after day with only the best food my humble money could afford for my fine feathered friends…they felt safe, fed, accepted and home. I set them up. Woe to me.

I have no words.

Take the feeders down you say. But the birds, they bring me such joy. This is the first occurrence of such horrific magnitude. We have endured squirrels, mass flocks of starlings who swoop in en mass like some sort of flash mob, raccoons tearing the feeders down night after night, snakes slithering up the tree to the bird houses–yes that was a bad thing and a crazy thing to watch…a giant rat snake made its way across the driveway, through the yard, up the tree and into the bird house, all as we watched the unthinkable. Thank God, no one was at home.

And now, a usurper has come to the yard, this small unsuspecting Falco Sparverius which sounds so like some Roman Gladiator, has come in, upsetting the fine balance of tranquility and peace… in and under the sad sick oak—I don’t want to talk about it.

I hate this whole balance of nature business, the whole food chain thing, the survival of the fittest, of the quickest of the smartest….I just hate one has to die so that another lives.
It’s just the way things are my husband tells me.
That doesn’t help my feelings…..

I’m sorry birds……
I don’t want to talk about it……

Surprise Guests

(photograph: Julie Cook/2013)

“Nature is the art of God.”
Dante Alighieri

Whenever I work in the yard, tend to the garden or have an opportunity of being out in the woods, there are no limits to the sights and sounds that so often bring me a sense of Divine Joy. I don’t know how anyone can stand outside, in the middle of “nature”, be it woods, ocean, mountains, field, garden–large or small, and definitely proclaim there is no Creator.

I have stood at the base of massive jagged mountains, ominous clouds capping the space above my head, as an angry, churning, black sea roared at my back–all the while feeling suddenly finite and small. I have stood waste high in brush, scanning the field for the infamous resident grizzles that called the very place I stood, home–all the while knowing that I was suddenly back in the food chain… and not necessarily on the top of that chain. I have paddled lazily on an inflatable raft on a turquoise clear sea, only to spy an ominous fin rise silently up then silently down right besides me– knowing all the while that I remained untouched, on my raft, not by my own accord.

It is at these certain moments when I, as the egocentric all powerful human, find myself knocked off my pedestal of arrogance, left but to quickly discover that I am merely a small piece of this place we call earth. We do not control this place, even though we so smugly think differently… it, in the end, will indeed control us.

It is at these moments, the moments of fierce and unpredictable adventures out of doors, when I know I am less and there is indeed More….yet there does not necessarily need to be extreme conditions or moments of fear for me to experience the often elusive glimpse of Divine Wonder—I can do so when I water a container of flowers or even clean out the garage….just as I did the other day and found a surprise guest hiding in a corner.

Mr. Toad had obviously wandered in our garage thinking he could or should hide-out behind the trash bin. I thought it best that he should be returned to the yard–as I gently scooped him up, depositing him near the plants in the garden. I would think the food “pickings” of a better variety and much more tasty in the yard verses the garage.

Even when I have the chance meeting with a toad, I am beautifully reminded that there is a Creator whose handiwork is constantly all around me. I am most thankful for these brief surprise encounters with nature, particularly when they are most unexpected,—these moments draw me out of my finite world, allowing me to see, sense, feel and touch the infinite Wonders which surround and thankfully engulf me.

I hope you have such opportunities on this Monday morning in June. What Wonders will you discover today?