Basket full of birds

I love the beauty of living, growing flowers hanging in colorful baskets from my front porch. But this spring, we had something even better.

We had a family of birds, nesting right in the flower basket.

First, my daughter and I watched as Mama sat for weeks, a serene mourning dove whose bright eyes kept watch each time we sat on the porch with her. Her nest was right above our heads, but she never stirred in our presence, steadfastly claiming her territory, protecting what we assumed were eggs hiding beneath her feathers.

After weeks and weeks of sitting – it seemed she never left the nest – I began to wonder if Mama might have lost her eggs. Maybe they had died, and she was sitting on perfectly shaped but now-vacant orbs? Maybe she was out of her mind with grief, continuing to sit despite her loss? We waited to find out. Meanwhile, my son came home from traveling in Central America – my own little family was back in the nest.

One day I noticed Mama bird had flown, and I thought perhaps that was the end of our front porch drama. I stood up on one of our chairs to peer into the nest.

There were no eggs. There were babies. Two shaggy, mussy-feathered babies sitting very, very still.

Later, Mama returned and we watched as the chicks nestled under her breast feathers, all but disappearing as she puffed herself up protectively. This continued for days, the babies taking up more and more space, growing at an unbelievable rate, the Mama flying off to forage for them and returning to the crowded nest.

And then one day the babies were gone. I found them sitting on a bench cushion under the nest, still scruffy but nearly as big as their Mama. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks that they’d gone from new discoveries tucked into the depths of the flower basket nest, to these gangly birds that reminded me first of toddlers, trying out their wings, and then of teenagers, on the verge of leaving home.

When I saw the babies in a nearby tree, then heard they’d been standing in my neighbor’s garden, I felt a pang of loss. Already? They were so young!

Then they were gone.

Mama came back. Did she miss her babies, hope they’d come home again? I empathized as my own kids talked about college and cooking school and how late they could stay out at night. But at least my babies were still around – the fledglings had disappeared entirely. Still, Mama sat quietly, as if waiting for them to return. Again, I thought she was perhaps addled in some way, out of her mind with grief.

Until I saw two fuzzy heads bump up under Mama’s breast. She’d had two new chicks.

This time around, I’ve noticed the Papa flying back and forth, feeding the babies, who poke and prod him around the throat and beak until he regurgitates whatever he’s gathered up in the garden for them. Today the whole family is balanced precariously in the basket, the babies so big their tails hang over the side, the adults trying to make themselves small to accommodate all those wings and feathers. Soon the nest will be empty again.

I can’t imagine what flowers I will plant when they are gone.