Bird Watching

We watched the mama bird build this nest - it took her all of about 24 hours. This spring has been filled with rainstorms, windstorms, hailstorms, thunderstorms. It's rained for 21 days. No kidding. It's some sort of record we've set and it's making us all a little crazy. Which makes this mama bird all the more amazing, since she put together this nest, made of twigs and mud and who knows what else, and built it to withstand this frightful Oklahoma weather. The nest started with three eggs, and somewhere along the way one of the eggs must have blown out of the nest. But that little mama bird made sure her two surviving babies made it through. She sat on that nest, and we would watch her fly away and bring back worms and then she would get back on that nest and watch us all as we watched her. It all paid off. Within a few weeks the two babies had feathers and big black eyes and they were ready to leave the nest. A few days after I took the photo of the bright-eyed birds, they flew away. And some of us were a little sad. We'll miss watching the mama, and climbing up on the ladder and trying desperately to get a good photo while she was away gathering food (that nest was waaaay up there). We're keeping the nest though. I still want to know how she put together that masterpiece in 24 hours.