Nestes

Tonight Drew told Jeff, "Daddy, we have 3 nestes!" Almost always when my children say, "Mommy, come and look at...." I go and look. It may only sometimes be interesting to me but it is always important to them. Yesterday when Scott said the above, I went and looked and there was the most well-made round little nest with 5 pale blue eggs in it nestled among cacti in the end of the window box off of his second story bedroom. Then we discovered another beautiful little nest in the same box in the middle. This nest was empty. We admired and looked and let everyone else look as well. The only problem was that the bird is scared away if we look out the window at the nest. It's literally right there and you could touch it (though we wouldn't) if you opened the window. So we came up with the idea that we'd only look a couple of times a day. Last week the children discovered a nest above one of the porches outside as well. So we have 3 "nestes" that we know of that we are watching. Today I went in Scott's room and discovered he had rigged up a plan. He does most of his school work in his room as well as reading books. Spending a lot of time at the desk or in a comfy chair afforded him the opportunity to watch the mama bird come and go and he has observed the daddy as well. It is a small brownish bird with black speckles and a white body. The Daddy has a red head. We are going to get a bird book from the library to see if we can identify it. Scott's plan was the rearrange his furniture and move a stack of large boxes that look like books atop a table near the window. He put a moveable mirror on top suspended by a piece of twine tied to the curtain rod. He tied it at just the right angle so that now you can stand in the room and look into the mirror to see the nest without scaring the mama bird away. (Now I know why he asked me for string for a "project".) The empty nest all of a sudden had 2 eggs in it yesterday afternoon then today it has 3. We are watching that nest closely too. We're so hoping we get to watch them hatch. We'll keep you posted.

The nest is in the bottom middle of this picture. It was hard to get a good picture because of the reflection of the glass.

Scott's rigged up system. The string goes from the top of the mirror to the curtain rod. You stand against the other wall and look in the mirror, a great view of the nest.