Little Gifts

We stayed home this memorial weekend. When you’re retired it doesn’t make sense to leave home when the rest of the population is traveling. It’s difficult to be a recluse when on the road with millions of people.

Yesterday we did yard work. Like adventurers slicing our way through the jungle, we pulled the weeds and overgrown branches from the flower bed that is just outside our bedroom window. While we were pulling and chopping the birds made loud comments from the brush where the lawn falls off to the river below. We discovered a small nest under a bush with more than a dozen tiny eggs. The mother was gone, but we were pretty sure that she was the one making such a racket in the bushes at the edge of the lawn. We made a canopy over the nest with the branches that we had cut and moved on to another project. My husband commented that since we had disturbed the nest, the quail would probably abandon it.


This morning I could hear quail babbling in the backyard and I wondered if the mother had returned to the nest. I found her all fluffed up over her eggs. As I moved my finger to take her photo, she flew away. I snapped a quick picture of the eggs and retreated to the house. I won’t be disturbing her nest again. It will be so good to have little ones around the house again!

Life is good.