No Vacancy

I put up a really nice birdhouse last year in a the big Ponderosa Pine tree in back of the house. I can look up and see the little wood house out of the window when I'm in bed, so when I wake up in the morning one of the first things I do is check the birdhouse. I waited all summer last year for a little bird family to take up residence, but it remained vacant. This spring I had new hope that I'd get a renter and had almost given up hope. Then on the morning of June 15th I was awakened by a most unusual chirp. It was more like a full sentence-chirp...it went on and on. And I noticed that a little tiny bird kept popping in and out of the round door of the birdhouse. As I watched I could see that it was trying to get twigs, (some of them quite large) into the little round door. It reminded me of a pole vaulter holding a pole horizontally and trying to enter a small round door. Time after time the twig would fall and the bird would zoom down to retrieve it. Amazingly, progress was made and more and more twigs were making it into the birdhouse. Some of them were too big to fit all the way in, so they are sticking out a little bit.

I'm so excited to finally have a bird family to watch this summer. I can't wait to see little baby birds poking their heads out of the door and perched on the limb ready to try their wings. All I have to worry about now is keeping the cats away!