I’m new at this blogging thing and this post is going to be a difficult one to write. On May 23 I posted about Life in a Hanging Flower Basket and how a pair of Junco’s had chosen one of our hanging baskets to build a nest in. There were four eggs in it. Today, as my wife was outside getting ready to go to the store, she noticed the nest on the ground. I was inside on the computer when she came back into the house visibly upset, and told me what she had seen. I felt I knew as soon as she informed me what had happened.
For the past few days there has been a raven ‘hanging around’, eyeballing that particular hanging basket. We had chased it away several times thinking it was after the baby Junco’s. That’s what ravens and crows do; they have babies to feed as well and I’ve seen it before how they raid other bird’s nests. Innocent until proven guilty, however, as I didn’t actually see what had happened to put the Junco nest on the ground. But, I thought I could make a pretty good guess. I’m sure it was the same raven we had been continuously chasing away and who was up to no good. It had been very persistent and I would bet my bottom dollar it was the culprit.
Not really thinking clearly, I picked up the nest and got rid of it. I also peeked inside the hanging basket to see what I could see and saw nothing; no sign of life. Then, I went for a long walk down the Galloping Goose Trail searching for answers from Mother Nature. In the final analysis, I had to conclude it is exactly how Mother Nature behaves. I felt guilty as I wondered if there was anything more I could have done to protect the nest. We couldn’t stand guard twenty-four hours a day, unfortunately. Where could we have moved the basket to make it safer? We couldn’t bring it into the house. I’m still pondering if there was anything we could have done to protect that family.
But wait, there’s more. When I got back from my walk, I was standing a few feet away from the hanging basket observing it and feeling sad. Then, amazingly, one of the Junco parents landed on a railing not two feet from me with something in it’s mouth. It simply looked at me for maybe ten seconds then flew into the basket. Now what? Did I miss seeing something when I peeked into it before my walk? Was the Junco building another nest? Feeding a survivor? I’m not going to investigate in and have another look. No way. Those Junco parents have probably been through enough stress already. And now I wonder as this story continues, it’s not the end after all. Mother Nature will continue to do her thing and I’m suddenly feeling somewhat optimistic that something positive will come out of all this. We can only hope.
UPDATE: I wrote the above post two days ago and since then we haven’t seen any activity around the hanging basket except for bees and I finally decided to have a peek inside. Nothing. No life to be seen. I’m afraid the parent Junco’s have left and I don’t want to think about what happened to the babies. It’s Mother Nature and I’ll leave it at that.
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