Walking up the hill from the ferry to the cul-de-sac where our house sits, I made the usual security scan to take note of anything out of order, like downed limbs, open windows or signs of forced entry, however unlikely the latter would be.
What I saw was shocking: Our beloved birdhouse was lying upside down beneath the tree branch it had been affixed to for nearly 20 years. It was a good old bird-house with a yellow roof and red walls. Green scrunge now mixed with the yellow and the perch outside the hole was pretty beat up from nine billion bird entries and exits. We got it from that guy in Mattituck, right on Route 25.
As I numbly approached what felt like a crime scene, I could only think of the baby birds inside. For it was that time of year, and the house wrens, in one of life’s everyday miracles, had returned yet another year to occupy the birdhouse and raise a family.
How the birdhouse came to be detached from the limb will be forever a mystery since the length of chain and spring clip binding it to the tree was intact. There was no physical way the birdhouse could have wound up upside down, other than the hand of God.
I was nearly immobilized with trepidation. With the greatest of care I put the birdhouse right side up, thinking that whatever bird babies, bird adults (or none) were inside would appreciate getting back to some kind of normal. These are wild birds, I reasoned, and mom or dad could rearrange the nest to restore family life. I would wait until the next day to put it back on the tree, which I did before I made my way to the IGA for The New York Times.
As I pulled back into the driveway, a tiny speck of a wren popped out of the bird-house, the mom, I’m guessing, back to the grind of looking for food. Another everyday miracle! The house wren tradition endures.
Yet the bird news didn’t stop there. We had noticed that a bird seemed to have taken up a presence in one of the Boston ferns hanging off the front porch. Every time we went out, the bird blasted out of the fern in a small explosion of flight. Until it didn’t.
It had good reason to stay put: three pale blue eggs in a nest. With a little Googling, we discovered we had house finches, a species that likes making families in hanging plants. Who knew? Google knew.
The next everyday miracle was the baby birds themselves. Not the prettiest of babies but they were ours. I was back in the city when Jane provided this report: She was sitting out back when she noticed a sizable group of adult birds acting in antic fashion, then three tiny birds fluttering about.
We surmise this was a kind of coming-out ritual for our new fern-loving finches. That’s our story and we’re sticking with it.
We have a dandy woodpecker story but I’ll keep that for another day.
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