Bird brains

I spent probably forty years of my life able to complete ignore the existence of birds.  I mean, hey, we briefly had a canary when I was 7, and in Grade 3 they made me learn what birds don't migrate south, but aside from that they were one of those things in the background to which I paid absolutely no attention.

So why is it that in the last few years I notice them all the time?  New attention to bird calls I can understand:  now that we have a cottage, that is the one and only thing I can hear outside my bedroom window on a summer morning, and it's a fabulous way to wake up.  Plus how can you not stop to savour an evening loon call?  But even visually they newly occupy my interest.  I like watching what games they're up to when I take the dog for a walk; I get a kick out of the mourning dove that watches us from the fence outside our kitchen window.  (Why is there only one?  Has she/he lost its mate?  Will it find another, or is it doomed to mourning-dove loneliness??)  The hawks soaring by the escarpment make me yearn to fly -- er, soar.

Today's fun bird-watching was a lowly robin who, in not such a lowly fashion, was preparing a nest.  The little creature decided it wanted some of the long grass by our chainlink fence to go with the dried grasses already in its beak so it went over to get some.  Peck, peck, peck...it must have gone on for two minutes.  I couldn't help but wonder how it got new grass without losing what it already had!  And so it gathered until something made it decide it had enough, and up it flew to the top of the cedar tree and proceeded, I assume, to add the new bits to a nest.  Tis the time of year of new life, I guess.  I'll have to keep an eye on that tree to see if I can see the new building development.