Thursday, July 31, 2008

Birds!!!

Earlier this spring we looked into this nest and saw 4 or 5 eggs. How exciting to have baby bird right on our fround porch . . .or so we thought!!!
Well the eggs finally hatched and we were excited to watch as these babies grew and got ready to take their first flight. . . or so we thought!!!
You can see the bird to the right flying around. . . no not just flying around. . . he is dive bombing the humans!!! These are barn swallows and in my research I have come to understand that they are very aggresive birds, if you come near there babies. We have some beautiful flowers that were hanging in our entry way less than a foot away from this nest. In the beginning I had no trouble watering them. As the babies grew the mommy and daddy became more aggresive each day. My flowers have to be watered on a daily basis or they will die. At first the birds would fly close but not to close, just to give us a little scare. Well I am not scared of a little bird so I continued to water my plants. I learned quickly that we should maybe move them for the time being. At least until the birds flew away. So we moved them and now they are about 4 feet away from the nest. Well the birds continued to get bigger and therefore the parents aggression tripled. One day I came out to water my plants. I was at least 15 feet away when one of the started dive bombing my head. They were so close I swear they touched my head once or twice. Okay I am tough but this was not fun and I have to admit a little scary.. . . but I had a mission to complete, I had to water my flowers. I filled my bowl that has a cute little spout on the end so I could water both sets of flowers in one trip. Well as I approached still 10 feet away the stupid bird dive bombed me. My reaction first was to yell at the bird. I yelled "STOP" as if he would listen. The second dive I raised my hands above my head to protect it and forgot that they had a bowl full of water and ended up dumping the gallon bowl of water over my head. I was furious!!!! I stomped into the house and up the stairs to change and blow dry my hair when I realized why I was soooo mad!!! Then I started laughing. The bird won!!! I ended up moving the flowers about 30 feet away and put Erik in charge or watering the flowers. The birds are now gone thank goodness and we knocked the nest down. We are not inviting our guests back next spring!

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