The Day We Named The Birds

I have mentioned in previous posts that we have become middle aged bird watchers. We have stepped up our game and have multiple seed types and jelly and oranges and hummingbird feeders. I pretty religiously fill up the bird bath and I may even trim our evergreen bushes so they have places to perch. We were super excited a few weeks ago when a house wren and his wife moved into a mostly decorative bird house on our deck. Baby Girl and I sat on the bench super quiet and watched them fly back and forth building their nest. Apparently, male wrens build multiple half-ass nests around an area to try and lure several females to come mate with him. The nest is supposed to impress her - like he is a good provider. So when he lures one, his new wife immediately throws all his sticks and twigs out and makes him help her find smaller twigs and fuzz and stuff to build a softer, better nest to have babies in. That sounds slightly familiar....

So this week, we upped our game and gave our birds names. It seemed the practical thing to do. After all, we are already talking to them all the time anyway - and 'hey birdie' seems so impersonal for a creature that lives in our yard and we talk to daily. In addition to our wren family on the deck, we have a colony of sparrows that live above the treehouse in what was supposed to be a purple martin house, but instead has become sparrow condos. As far as we know, these are the only birds residing in our yard specifically...although the neighborhood is home to a pair of finches and a pair of blue jays that frequent our feeders, as well a collection of teeny, tiny chickadees that will practically sit in my lap.

Baby Girl named the sparrows "Cheesy Potatoes". I am still not completely sure if she intentionally calls ALL sparrows Cheesy Potatoes or if she believes she continually sees the exact same sparrow over and over again. I am not going to ask. Today she said "Hi, Cheesy Potatoes!" to a sparrow in my dad's backyard, apparently believing he followed us to Grandpa's for the afternoon. So all of the sparrow colony is Cheesy Potatoes. I got to name the wren husband. He is Mo. Baby Boy names the wren wife Rose. So Mo and Rose live together on the deck by the house and Cheesy Potatoes 1-6 live about 30 feet away on top of the tree house. They remind me of cranky old neighbors that have been living side by side for forty years. They sit on their porches and squawk at each other all day..."Get off my grass!". They scold me when I go out to weed the pepper plants or harvest salad. Cheesy Potatoes keeps dropping sunflower seeds in my pea teepee and I have a bazillion baby sunflowers sprouting that are not strong enough to ever grow, but are just strong enough to choke out my pretty purple pees. "Get off my peas!" Crazy birds.

We are quite the ecosystem.