In the last few days, I've noticed a pile of nest-building materials on the ground under where they build last year. But where the nest should be, there was nothing. And I was impressed with Janneke - because I recall earlier in the summer, when they were trying to build, I would sweep it off there, subtly sending the idea that our front porch might not be the best place to raise a family. I knew I hadn't swept anything off, and so I figured it must be Janneke, overcoming her usually soft-hearted nature for the good of the birds. "Good for you," I thought, remembering foggily talking to her about this before at some point. And with a pang of sadness at not having baby birds to look at, but with a firm jaw and the knowledge that the birds would be better off getting used to the notion that people are not to be trusted, I went on my merry way.
Turns out, though, Janneke isn't sweeping anything off. It's just that their skills at nest-building have dropped off somewhat. They're going at it as I write this. Check it out - here's what they've built so far:
And here's the ground under their building site:
Strange how, once the twigs and bark fibers and such fall, they become invisible. Rather than flit down to the ground and pick it up again and try once more, the birds zoom off and scout out completely fresh prospects. Seems to be one of those interesting bird blind spots - like the way they hoist their baby bird tuckuses over the edge of the nest to poop, but don't seem able to differentiate between the edge of the nest that will actually send the poop down to the ground, and the edge that's backed up against the wall of the porch's roof, where all they're going to do is smear it right at eye level. but maybe the fallen-nest-materials blindness isn't quite as simplistic (OK, stupid) as the pooping behavior - evolution may have eventually determined that if something falls off, it's best to assume it was flawed material for some reason and scout out some new stuff.
It just ocurred to me that I could set up the Flip Video camera out there and leave it running for an hour at a time, then see how much activity we get. Wahoo! New project! The kids will be veeeery into it, no doubt.
OK - off to see about a lawnmower. The handle broke off our reel mower, at its weakest point, leaving the rest of the mower basically intact. But the mower was kind of inefficient lately anyway - I hadn't been the best about maintaining it, and I can't adjust the blades anymore, so it takes three or four trips across the grass to get it cut where it used to take two. So if this guy can't fix the handle, I won't feel too bad about getting a new one. The guy I'm working with here, by the way, is fascinating - he's got a backyard workshop where he's been repairing lawnmowers forever. Maybe I'll try to capture some footage of it this afternoon. All the nooks and crannies of this shed, probably formerly a mom-and-pop mechanic or welding operation attached to the back of his house, are filled with oily, dusty, frighteningly useful and arcane doo-dads and thingamabobbers, most of which he probably couldn't name or describe, but which I'd bet he could find in a matter of seconds if the feel of a lawnmower told him he needed it. I love those little workshop spaces, the ones that are somewhere between shabby and lovingly maintained, where someone has managed to make a living and do it his own way on a small scale. My Dad's friend Dutch was that way, and this guy appears to be, too. I'm taking Q with me - a somewhat scary prospect, because this older gentleman has some sort of disorder or injury where his right eye is almost vestigal - clouded, deflated, and downright leaky. I myself had a hard time keeping my cool while speculating with him about whether he could find a handle to replace mine - he told me yesterday to come back today around 10:00, if it wasn't raining, so he could see what he had. And now it's 10:00...
Hasta pronto!
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