Bluebirds Vs. Phoebes, Continued

A couple of weeks ago I wrote (http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2013/06/bluebirds-vs-phoebes.html) about the battles between the phoebes and the bluebirds who were trying to raise families in close proximity to each other and within spitting distance (well, upward spitting distance) of our sun porch.

I told how the male bluebird would bang his feet and wings repeatedly on our window, scarcely a foot away from where the phoebes' nest perched on the downspout.  And whenever the phoebes tried to get to their nest, the bluebird would fly at them and scare them away.  With such persistent harassment, plus endless days of torrential rain, I didn't hold much hope for the phoebes.

Their nest was too high for us to look inside, but my husband rigged up an old side view mirror on a pole and we saw to our alarm that there were eggs in there.  As the guerrilla warfare and the rain continued, I thought surely the embryos had died.  I couldn't understand why the phoebes didn't cut their losses and find other ways to give meaning to their life.

Then, eating my lunch on the patio during a five-minute sunny spell the other day, I watched the phoebes catching bug after bug in mid-air, flying to the nest, and flying out again.

That had to mean that they were feeding somebody.

And sure enough, there he or she was, an adorable, gray-feathered, yellow-beaked baby, Nature's reward to the phoebes for their courage and perseverance.  Right now as I write the rain has let up, and the phoebes are in dinnertime mode, bringing bugs to their child every few seconds.  Do nestlings, I wonder, ever get indigestion?

Inspection of the bluebird nest box is a simpler matter, requiring only that I drag a patio chair over to the flower bed and, taking care not to crush the echinacea, stand on it and peer in the hole.  The last time I looked the nest contained five eggs, each the same intense blue as their father's wings.  What chemistry allows these birds to secrete that color as if they were cartridges filled with some divine ink?

I know that if I were commuting daily to a job and coming home at night to my own nestlings the politics of bird families would have less claim on my attention.  But now that my own nest is empty I find myself living vicariously, a least a little, through the birds, participating in Nature's great drama which, for all I can see, is every bit as compelling for bluebirds and phoebes as it once was for me.

Dear Bluebird: Please Go Away

After living cheek by jowl with you all last summer, I wasn't sure I wanted you back in the little nest house by our porch window.   But yesterday, seeing that splash of orange and blue at the top of the bare ash tree and hearing the familiar song did momentarily gladden my heart.

But only  momentarily.  Do you y'all birds have long memories?  Because we humans do.  I remember how thrilled I was when you first appeared around my house, and your wife  built a nest in the nest box.  And when, sometime later, I peeked in and three wobbly jack-in-the-box heads sprang up, tears of joy sprang into my eyes.

Your children grew shiny blue feathers and began casting eager looks at the outside world.  And then one day all five of you disappeared without a trace.  I had expected the fledgelings to hang around for a while, cheeping on the patio and flying up into low bushes, the way most baby birds do.  But instead they vanished overnight and left me wondering what catastrophe had occurred.

A few weeks later you and your wife came back, and she fixed up the nest and laid another clutch of eggs.  And that's when the trouble started.  When I heard the first loud bang on the porch window, I thought you had forgotten that the glass was there.  But that was followed by another bang, and another, and by much barking from Wolfie, who thought you were trying to effect an unlawful entry into our house.

I worried that you would give yourself brain trauma, but when I looked closely I saw your claw prints on the glass.  You weren't accidentally banging your head against the window.  You were purposely attacking it.  And you went on attacking it from morning til night, furiously and without respite, for the rest of the summer. 

We put yellow stickies all over the glass.  We hung large sheets of paper on the inside, then hung them on the outside.  Nothing worked.  You hit so hard that the glass shook.  And with every blow, Wolfie barked.

Then the weather cooled and the days grew short, and you and your spouse finally departed.  We breathed a sigh of relief.  When I went to clean out your house, there were three eggs inside.

When I saw you on that ash tree yesterday, I thought you might have turned over a new leaf.  But I was peeling carrots in the kitchen later on when I heard that familiar bang, followed by the familiar bark.  And there you were again, trying to break the window.
Have you never heard that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds? How about Einstein's definition of madness:  continuing to do something even if it doesn't work?  No?  You say you like flying at the window?

You're supposed to be the bluebird of happiness, not the bluebird of rage.  Please don't put us through another summer like the last.  That nest box is not your only housing option.  There is a nice dead tree with just the western exposure you favor at the bottom of the driveway, convenient to both grass and gravel.   I think you and your wife might be very happy there.

Phoebe Or Phoenix?

In the last post, I told you about the phoebe catastrophe, how I found the nest on the hard slate floor of the front porch, surrounded by three dead babies.  After that, I noticed that the parents kept flying into the porch and flying out again, which I interpreted as the phoebe way of mourning.  I hoped their sorrow would pass.

As it turns out, the phoebes weren't mourning, or, if they were, they didn't let it slow them down in the building of...another nest!  The day after the old one fell, the foundation of the new one was in place, just a couple of feet from where the old one had been.  Now the new nest is halfway finished, and the slate beneath it is covered in gobs of mud and other construction debris.

I'm not one to see moral lessons wherever I turn in Nature, but I must confess that these phoebes got to me.  I mean, what resilience after tragedy, courage in the face of adversity, optimism on the heels of abject failure!  They reminded me of Al Gore, who after the election debacle did not crawl into a hole, as I would have done, but went on to become the patron saint of contemporary ecology.

Persistence, thy name is Phoebe.

On the other hand, maybe thy name is Phool?  Didn't Einstein say that stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?

So I'm feeling a little confused.  Should I admire--even imitate--the phoebes for their persistence, or should I feel sorry for them and try not to look at what's going on in the front porch too often?

Meanwhile, all is well with the bluebirds, except that the parents are so busy bringing food to the nest that they actually look thinner to my worried eye.