For the Love of the Birds

This season has been tough on the birds in our yard. About 5 weeks ago we decided to clean our side yard after 2 years of total neglect. As we were raking and tossing and basically clearing out 2 years’ worth of overgrowth we disturbed a quail’s nest. Sadly mom did not return to the nest after almost being stepped on and her nest uncovered so the eggs died.

Fast forward to this week, my man has been building a full roof over the deck we have in our back yard. Once complete, we’ll be able to use this wonderful space all year. He has it about 2/3 of the way done and it is looking pretty cool. He had planned on finishing it this weekend in time for a Bar-B-Q on July 4th. Well, that isn’t going to happen. A dove and her mate have built a nest on one of the main support beams so his construction project is on hold until baby birds leave the nest – much to his irritation. Fortunately he’s a good sport.

Mama dove sitting on her nest

Of course, having a nest in the middle of my back yard also poses additional challenges. I have two dogs. Jack Russell /Mini American Eskimo mix pups with springs in their feet and a serious case of OCD. Unfortunately, one of them really thinks doves are tasty. She is the reason that I had to remove the bird feeders from my year. She would lie in wait and pounce on unsuspecting birdies. Now I have a nest above the deck. A baby bird falling out of that won’t stand a chance. So, what to do, what to do? Naturally we’ll be hanging a makeshift bird hammock. It will be high enough that the pups can’t reach it and low enough to hopefully not bother mama and her chicks. As I said, my man is a really great sport. When I told him we had to do this the only telling sign that he thought I was nuts was the lifting of one eyebrow, then he started to figure out what we could do…yay for engineers!

After I wrote the above I found out that we also have a Blue Jay nest in the yard and their baby keeps getting out of the nest. When that happens both parents get noisy and obnoxious until they get baby back where it belongs. So far no baby birds have been injured in my yard and we are doing all we can to keep it that way. As you can see below, the Jays are not afraid of the dogs and the dogs are ignoring them-  for the most part! Yay!

Alice looking at the Jay

In the above picture, both dog and bird are behind the fence, that fence is to keep the dogs out of one of my gardens. The jay is in the tree straight up from Alice's head.Keep good thoughts for the birdies in my back yard, hopefully they will successfully raise their babies and come back again next year – after the deck is complete!