What's That in OUR Yard? The Birds Nest Saga

A few weeks ago Francesca got in trouble. (What's new, right?) She looked up at the hose reel and saw something amiss. There was a rough and tumble kind of birds nest in the hollow of the reel and something was rustling around in it. She was very curious.

Of course there is a back story to this saga. One day our owner noticed some Juncos bringing straw and leaves into the hose reel. She thought this wasn't a very safe place so removed the "debris" hoping to dissuade the little black-hooded birdies from building a nest. She went to bed thinking everything was taken care of. Imagine her surprise when she awoke the next morning, went outside and saw.... a huge messy Junco nest. Inside, they had made a little round indentation and they weren't going to budge! So she let them be. "Let nature take its course," she muttered.

Junco

So the next day she checked and sure enough there were four little eggs in the nest. And the mother bird definitely was inhabiting the nest.

Back to Francesca's troublesome day. Well, the eggs did hatch and it was those tiny birds making the noise that she heard. She sniffed and it smelled interesting to her. With no mother bird in sight Francesca went up to the hose reel and with one huge bite, she lifted the nest out of the hose reel and was coming around the corner, prancing.... when she ran into our owner.

"Drop that NOW, Francesca," could be heard way over where I was on the other side of the yard. Francesca dropped the intact nest and I guess our owner picked it up and put it back in the hose reel.

A very bad photo of the birds in the nest

The days passed and the birds in the nest got noisier and noisier. The mother and father birds would swoop out of the nest if one of us approached. They were very protective. Our owner is protective too and put chairs all around the nest so we couldn't bother the birds.

So the day came that we packed up and went to our Doggie Country Club for an entire week. We got back yesterday. Francesca and I both went over to where the nest was and sniffed around. We didn't hear or see anything. Apparently the birds flew away when we were gone.... all of them!

I don't know if there is a moral to this story but Francesca should know better than to pick up a nest with live baby birds in it. She's lucky they all lived!

The culprit

Love, Cinnamon