Gone to the birds...

The drama continues under the deck and in the backyard.

The nest had been moved (fallen?) off the beam and now is in the grass under the deck. So now there are baby robins wandering about in the grass like stealthy little ninja assassins.* We found two of them fairly easily as they were still near the nest. We couldn't find #3.

But the grass is pretty tall so it was tricky to find the little birds. Birds blend, yo. Can you see the bird in this picture below?**

These are Finn's legs.
As you can see Scott has been fertilizing.
And it has been raining a lot!

 We scoured the yard and finally found him hiding near the sandbox. (Aside: we also found a hammer***, 3 skipping ropes, many pieces of disintegrating sidewalk chalk, 5 soccer balls in various stages of inflation and about 15 of Finn's socks- all balled up and soaking wet. Not a pair in the bunch!)

This guy was speedy.

Scott was trying to mow the lawn and had the other 4 of us moving the birds out of harms way with shovels from the sandbox.  Very careful not to touch them.  Birds harbour disease, pestilence and possibly the plague. Don't laugh at me. I'm serious.  People still die of the Black Plague each year,  see here. Admittedly not a lot of people... but it could still totally happen. And I am pretty sure they can link it directly back to touching rodents- flying or otherwise.

Baby Bird Emergency Retrieval Team
(B.B.E.R.T.)

Scott had Olivia walking in front of the mower just in case. The last thing we needed was a sickening crunch and a puff of feathers coming out of the side of the mower.

I liked this little guy best. He had good hair.

These guys are pretty mobile now and we expect Cuckoo Momma Bird to start moving them around a little more. They likely won't stay in the yard for much longer. This will likely be a lot less stressful for her and for the cats who have been watching from the back windows. Howard, very thoughtfully, offered to take care of a few of the babies while we scouted for the last one. We said thank you but no.

Cuckoo Momma Bird and another one (Daddy Bird?) are still giving us the stink-eye when we are near and screaming at us from the fence. At least we know that we were trying to keep them safe too.

Don't worry Momma Bird, we don't want your babies
 or your plague.

That is, when we weren't trying to mow them.


*If ninja assassins eat worms. You don't know. They might.
**Um, so yeah... there is no bird in that picture. It was a trick question. Gotta stay on your toes if you are going to read this blog. But now imagine that picture times a thousand and there you have our yard and the difficulty of the bird search. Now it's a lesson to you all.
*** Okay, we didn't really find a hammer either. The bird search just reminded me of Finn's boom-a-rang hammer because we were near the play structure.