Birdhouses

Today I am grateful for birdhouses.  I love the different styles and designs.  I especially love seeing them occupied by tenants.

Last year I bought some birdhouses from Michaels and spent painstaking, wonderful hours painting them.  I did one to look like a sweet church with flowers bordering every wall.  It was very cute.  We hauled out the ladder and hung it in the tree outside of our kitchen window.  It didn’t take more than a few days before a “tenant” moved in.

 I could sit for hours watching a bird at task in a new residency.  A tiny wren hauled a stick that was as big as a coat hanger and tried to get it through the little hole.  After a few attempts, it tossed and flipped the branch so that it only had one end in its beak, jammed it through the hole and munched until broken, manageable-sized pieces were all over the bush below.  From there it was easy.  Talk about dedicated. 

When it rained, a piece of the church birdhouse fell off.  Then it got windy and another piece fell off. . .and another and another and so on. . .until all that kept hanging in the tree was the woven work of the bird attached to a few sticks of birdhouse.  By the time she and her family had moved on, the house was kindling.

This year I’m grateful that we hung a substantial birdhouse in the same tree.  She’s baaaaccckkk.  She’s working fast. . .just in case this new home of hers is on natures demolition schedule, like the last one.  It isn’t, so I can watch her gather and weave until I’m a bird-grandma again.