Last year, we had a family of House Finches in our arbor vitae in front of our house. The male and female had three chicks. One of the chicks died that first morning. The other two – who knows, they seemed to have survived the first day or two at least before they went somewhere else.
Phineas Finch, 2012
Fiona Finch, 2012
Baby Finch, 2012
They’re back. This time, they live in the bush closest to our front door. In fact, the nest is visible out of our kitchen window. As of yesterday, there were no eggs, though Fiona was frantically preparing the nest. She built it out of normal nest stuff, plus the freshly cut grass from my lawn, plus long white dog hair from somewhere nearby. While she works, Phineas is perched on a tree above the front door. They chatter back and forth in a steady stream, Fiona at a ~100 Hz rate, and Phineas several times faster. It’s a keep-alive, a heartbeat if you will. Think about it for a second. Let’s say the birds had an alarm system along the line of “hey, I’ll chirp like crazy if something bad is about to happen and then you should escape.” That works great…until a cat pounces and snaps your neck before you can even shriek in terror. This is a better system. “We’ll keep chatting. If I’m ever quiet, you can assume something’s wrong and should get the hell out of here.” When one of us gets out of the car or goes through the front door, Phineas falls silent and Fiona bolts for a nearby tree. It’s a good system – we use that concept in designing electronic monitoring too.
Anyway, Phineas particularly enjoys the dandelions that grow throughout our yard (later, they’ll love the Zinnia).
Phineas Finch, 2013
And here’s Fiona in the nest:
Fiona Finch, 2013
This is wonderful and all…but if you’re familiar with our house animals, you might see some tension brewing. We do have one other more sinister resident – at least we used to. We haven’t seen him (well, her…) since last spring, but Mr Slithersworth and the Finch family do not make good neighbors. Mr Slithersworth would enjoy a meal of eggs or chicks. I’d prefer he stuck to grasshoppers, of which their are many. If he could eat the yet unnamed 10 lb rabbit that lives in the back, I’d be OK with that too. Or, he could leave. In any case, we’ll be watching the Finches closely. I think that Fiona laid her eggs today – she’s been sitting on the nest all afternoon. She’s about a month later than last year, for whatever that’s worth. We’ll see what we get.
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