Report from the (finch) colonies

They’re on their third batch of babies, and showing no signs of stopping

We are animal people. And we respect living things. But I can’t honestly say we have been bird people; by which I mean we don’t have birdfeeders or birdwatch as such.

Even as I write that I realize that you all have countless pieces of evidence that this is not even remotely true. Hello, turkeys? So let me start over:

We have a new obsession. My husband now sits in a different chair—a break in long habit—so he can see the finch feeder he bought “for me” as a surprise. He interrupts serious conversations to point out how many goldfinches are on the feeder. He put out a ball of fuzz for them to line their nests. He urges me to buy oranges for them, and admonishes me when I suggest cutting down some of the thistles they love that are taking over the ravine. I listen for the greedy peeping of the chicks in the nest in our chimney vent. We look out the kitchen window to count heads peeking out of the top of the nest. He can see them while he does television hits in front of the mantle.

The angle of the house finch (not purple finch, as I previously reported) nest is such that I can never get a good photo of it. But it has been continuously busy since the weekend my engineer nephew carefully attached hardware cloth to the vent to prevent the birds from building there. They are no longer in the vent, which is a bonus, but they are now on it, using the crumpled anti-pigeon roosting structure he installed as a handy foundation. We were so pleased with ourselves. Note: Finches are not pigeons.

They’re on their third batch of chicks. I calculate they have time for at least one more round before the cold sets in. We’ll see.

On a sadder note, at the cottage I noticed that a mourning dove had adapted last year’s robin’s nest on the ledge of the second story garage window. It’s seemed to me a precarious spot, but it worked for the robin. I saw the dove’s mate in the yard, gathering food. Mourning doves mate for life, and it touched me to see this pair working together. I watched the nest when we were there, hoping for babies. But now the female seemed all alone. One day after we’d been gone for a week or so, I noticed that the nest was empty. It seemed too soon for baby birds to have hatched and fledged.

Then one day I looked out the upstairs window and saw the mourning dove sitting on a pathetic pile of sticks on top of our window air conditioner. I closed the blind so she wouldn’t be startled by us, but I wondered why she should choose the loud rumbly air conditioner as a location. And how was she insulating those eggs, not just from noise and vibration, but temperature? Most important: where was her mate?

Every day I would peep through the side of the blind to see how she was doing, and whether I could see any eggs. There she was, looking back at me without apparent fear. She never seemed to leave. Nor did she seem to have any visits from her partner.

Yesterday, after a week away, I peeked out, and she was gone. There was only one cold, abandoned egg.

I think her mate must have been killed somehow, and she was unable to manage alone. I find that little egg such a sad relic of forlorn hopes. I wonder if she will find another mate, or if she will go on through life without a partner. I doubt it’s possible for a little bird who lives outside a flock to turn to a community or another bird for help.

Life is hard sometimes.

But…for the rest of us it is a beautiful, cool, sunny morning, and the lake beckons. Its beauty hides the lives of its many creatures, with all their successes and tragedies. And I’m afraid they’ll find their routines disrupted today by a pair of German Shepherds—now sighing heavily near my chair—who love to swim.

Happy Saturday.

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And now for your gratuitous dog photo:

It was a champagne and sunset Friday night.