Momma Bird

I love watching the birds in my backyard. I hardly recognize any of the breeds, just like I recognize cars…oh there’s a blue one, and there is a black one, look at the one with the red top or yellow wings. Nevertheless, I do enjoy them. Yesterday a mother blackbird lost one of her 3 babies. She had persevered through the nesting stages, gently, patiently sitting on the delicate eggs. Then the tireless duty of feeding the open mouths, connected to  bottomless pits of baby tummies. Good thing Daddy blackbird was able to share the duties. I watched as the babies grow too big to fit in the nest perched at the top of our large pine . Then one day they disappeared. No movement in the nest or on the tree branches. Could she have taught them everything in an evening and off they flew? Wayne and I then started to see glimpses of the babies hidden out in the front yard and in the garden. Momma Blackbird had them hidden on the ground. I saw one under the tree a couple of days ago. I was really fearful that something was wrong with it. It really didn’t move much, but within a few minutes, it had disappeared again. I was spraying the roses yesterday and almost stepped on one while Momma was cackling above my head. Were we seeing all three again, or just one at different places? Was one really injured or just struggling with the normal course of growing up?
Then the unimaginable, completely avoidable decision to let Huck out to the back yard after being cooped up in the basement all morning. He usually just limps off the porch to pee and comes right back. This time he stayed on the porch and sniffed the air for a while. I saw him take a jaunty pace off the porch and into the garden. Was he stopping to do “his business”? NO!!! He had discovered the baby!  I ran out there as fast as I could to distract him, but he had it in his mouth and when he dropped it, I know it was not going to survive. Another mother had lost her baby.
I felt that loss. I know that loss. I wish I had a bird’s brain so I wouldn’t have to know that pain of loss …That’s not true and a whole different story. The hard work to get them out of the nest, the hard work once they are out, still needing a parent’s care. Gone in a flash. I saw the baby limping around earlier and my heartstrings were pulled to Chris’s first wreck. I hoped the little guy was going to be okay. Then when its little life draining body dropped from Huck’s mouth, I cried… again. For momma blackbird…or for me?
Later Momma was under the tree with her other two babies continually feeding and guiding them. The other 2 were okay... for now. She was going on about her life, doing what she was supposed to do, caring for her surviving brood.  I’m trying to do that too.