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The other day, I checked on the bluebird family in our new nesting box. I found a little set of pretty blue eggs inside!
I then went to the mailbox and decided to clean out the old nest that seems as though it's been sitting there for weeks. When I looked at it, it did seem as though it was a little larger than it had been previously. I pulled it out, and found another set of eggs -- four in total.
I don't know if those eggs are old and have been abandoned, or another bluebird couple have set up squatting rights in the old mailbox nest. However, just in case they are viable, I put the nest back where I found it.
I couldn't help but think -- this is a very random thought -- that if hope had a shape, it would probably be oval. Nothing is so clearly symbolic of hope as an egg. And I certainly have seen a lot of eggs around here --including the eggs we found after the spring tornado, and the 2 eggs that fell out of the other nest in the neighboring mailbox, and these latest discoveries, I've seen at least a dozen songbird eggs this year. Lots of eggs and no babies.... yet.
Hope remains.
After last week's carpenter bee discovery, my husband found yet another nesting site on our property.
However, it's still unclear whether or not the expecting parents are still using their new home, or if they've moved on to another site. I have not seen birds in this nest yet; however, our bird feeder is in the back yard, so I do not watch birds much in our front yard. However, I'm trying to leave the mailbox alone as much as possible, just in case they are nearby.
The nest certainly surprised my neighbor, who stopped by to drop off her latest batch of used Mason jars (she knows I will re-use them for canning later this year). She usually leaves them underneath the mailbox, but found it was currently occupied. Last month, when strongs storms and tornados raced through the area, she found two small unbroken bird eggs in her yard that had been blown from their nest. She brought them to me, and we wondered what to do with them. We felt a little sad, especially because the eggs had survived the storm and were perfectly shaped and unbroken. However, they had been out of the nest for several hours, exposed to the weather, so I knew there was nothing we could do. I placed them in my flower garden, and they were gone two days later.
I still have to pick up my mail every day, but I'll wait a few more weeks before touching this little cubbyhole. Perhaps a young and inexperienced pair created this nest, unaware that USPS still delivers 6 days a week, and they will move on to a site with a little less traffic!
