Bird

Last year around this time, actually a couple of months from now, late August, my husband took action against the birds that have been living in our eaves since I moved into this house almost 15 years ago.

We, the birds, the starlings and I, had an arrangement. We would not bother one another while we both lived at this home. And, year after happy year these birds would come back in the late spring and remain until late summer. Then, they would take up their nests and leave again.

However, Bob and I married some 9 years ago. From that day, he’s continued to sneer up at the eaves and grumble how “they’ll destroy the house” and “look at the mess…” You get the idea, right? Of course, I argued how they had the right to live where they wished just as much as we did. He just dismissed my argument with a huff and walked off, murmuring death to the starlings. 😦

It was about August of 2011 that my dear husband hired these, these, these men to remove the nests from the underneath our roof’s line. And, it was these men who assured me that if there remained any live nestlings that the adult birds would find them where these men would be depositing them, high in some trees within our outlying woods. (Which was bogus because they were just saying this to appease me. You know, we’ll tell her this and then do that? You know as well as I that they simply dumped the nests on the ground and never looked back.)

So, I called our local wildlife rehabilitation center, Wolf Hollow Wildlife Rehab Centre, and asked them about the issue. To which they told me that although many birds find their young if they become lost or removed or if they fall from their nests, starlings did not.

Fortunately, I had postponed the “procedure” long enough that by the time these men got around to actually removing the nests (of which I monitored with an eagle eye!), they had long gone empty–the nests, that is. Lucky for THOSE MEN who proceeded to put up new “bird-block” (a hideous product, if ever!) and said, as they slapped their hands together proudly, “It’s all fixed. The birds won’t get back into the eaves now.”

When the starlings returned they seemed nonplussed about the situation I had rued over since the previous season and within seconds had pierced the new bird-block wires and proceeded, as they have for a decade-and-a-half to RE-build their nests, fluttering their wings busily as they re-constructed their summer homes and laid their eggs.

And, now, after the chicks have hatched, the racket they make sounds like a lovely orchestral movement as they chitter away, busy as ever once again bringing new life and music to the house.

In fact, the noise has been so wonderful this season that I thought at one point my starlings might fly the house off its foundation and take me and all contents to wherever they go when they leave after summertime. As I pondered this notion, a great idea brewed within me for another children’s story called THE HOUSE THAT FLEW AWAY. A story about a flock of starlings who fall in love with a house and decide to deposit it in a place where they can live year round. The problem? There’s a human who lives inside with a mess of animals.