The dark-eyed juncos are gone from my backyard feeder, and in their place are the sparrows and finches. The robins, too, are back, pulling up worms from our lawn, performing their darting dances from fence post to fence post. Unfortunately, the house two doors down that was abandoned for three years is now occupied, and when the new neighbors moved in, they removed the robin's nest from the top of their porch light. Now our annual robin couple we've come to rely on for at least a baby or two every May has no place to roost. Already this spring, I've seen the couple--the male and female robin who have come back, expecting their nest to be where they left it. They land on the metal porch light and slide slowly off, bewildered, mouths full of dry grass.
I'm glad they're back. I had thought they wouldn't return, not after what happened last year. They had three babies last May, and as the hatchlings progressively became more alert, sitting on the edge of the nest and flapping their wings, I grew nervous. If they fell, they'd hit the concrete, and so I laid out two yoga mats and one sleeping bag mat, just in case, as I waited for them to venture out into the world.
When I came home from work one day to find one of the hatchlings hopping across the road, I couldn't help myself. I went after it, spoke softly and kindly, bent over with my hands out, and it hopped right on. Slowly, I carried the baby back to its nest, intending to put it back with the other two.
My husband ran inside and came back out with a dining room chair he put down under the nest.
"Take him," I said, wanting my husband to climb up on the chair and put the baby back in the nest.
But something about my husband's hand around the baby's back terrified it, and it began to shriek, at which point all three babies took off into the air, their first flight together, each in their own direction--one under a car, the other smack in the middle of the road again, and yet another under a bush.
"Damn it," I shrieked as a gang full of neighborhood birds flew over to cuss me out, all of them on the parking lot dancing about, as they chirped angrily. My husband and I had seen this before--birds defending each other like this, especially their babies, the innocents, but we'd never seen such a large group so sorely offended. They were aghast, all of them--sparrows, finches, starlings, and robins.
"I'm sorry," I said, having learned my lesson--that I knew less than they did about how to protect the babies, how to help them navigate the world. I had interfered and only made things worse. After that, for several weeks, the two parents had to deliver worms to three separate locations--under the neighbor's porch, behind our back fence, and under a lawn decoration the next block over. Every once in a while, one of them would perch on my deck and glare through the window as if to suggest that they were exhausted, and I was at fault. Stupid human.
I'm sorry.
Still, they have returned, and as a peace offering, I ran out and bought them a roosting house, one just like Google says they prefer--with an open front and semi-open sides. We hung it on our porch, high above the ground, out of the elements. I wait for them to bring their mud and dried grass there so that I might have another chance to watch the babies hatch and grow, and this time, take flight on their own time. But as of yet, the robins have denied me the pleasure. They do not like how often we go in and out of our front door, how much noise we make, the dinging of our wind chimes.
Last week, I stepped out onto the back deck and found a lone white egg on the top of the recycling bin. It was cracked, a tiny yellow pool beneath it, and as far as I could see, there was no conceivable explanation for its being there. There is no roof above the bin. There is no nest anywhere it could have fallen out of. But still it was there, a mourning dove's loss.
"Maybe it stuck to the bird and fell off of her while she was flying," my husband said as I held it up and examined it.
Maybe he's right. Yet, I'd like to think of the tiny egg as a sign, a reminder even. The little life that was inside the egg is gone now, and the cracked artifact of both its beginning and end is left to me. I let it remind me of last year's lesson, of the importance of standing at a distance, of observing with love and respect, of letting go of control. And I stand at my front window and wait for new life to return to my doorstep.
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