Bayou Life Ain't for the Weak!

  The Bayou and its surrounding area is full of interesting things.  Well, at least they are interesting to me.  Most folks would most likely not be traipsing about the muck and mire to examine an egg on the ground or brave tick and mosquito bites to check on the welfare of a bird's nest.  I do.  I have no problem battling the elements, so to speak, just to keep an eye on my critters.  This afternoon, several things caught my attention. First, Friend Owl was indeed back to harass the songbirds.  If he keeps this up, his name might change to something less sweet.  As I pushed aside the Sweetspire branches, he turned toward me then made a hasty retreat deeper into the palmettos.  I was not giving chase as something else needed investigating.  A bright white egg could be seen under the branches of the Mimosa Tree.  Uh, oh.  I knew that a Mourning Dove had nested near there.  Sure enough, both eggs were missing from the nest but only one was on the ground.  The shell had been cracked in two places and had scratches from sharp teeth on the sides.  This was not the work of the baby dove and I have a sneaky feeling that the owl was not the culprit here. He would have just downed the egg and not bothered cracking it.  This seemed to be the work of a squirrel.  Poor songbirds just cannot catch a break here.

  While I was at the water's edge, a female cardinal swooped down just a few feet from me.  Her nest was in the grapevines that twined around a dead Bay Tree right next to the Sweetspire.  As I watched, she doused herself in the shallows of the brackish water.  This far back in the Bayou, the water changes from salty to brackish making it a bit safer for her to be drinking.  This time, however, she was not drinking but soaking her feathers.  After just a few minutes, she flew back to her nest to settle  in on the eggs.  Her actions reminded me of something that Pop would do back on the farm.  We had a large incubator that would hatch up to a hundred eggs at a time.  Each day, Pop would show me how to moisten the eggs with a sprinkle of water and then turn the eggs end to end.  According to him, this was to assure that they hatched.  "Mama Hen would do the same.  She turns her eggs regularly and will get her feathers wet to moisten the eggs."  Mama Cardinal knew just what she was doing!

  During Mama Cardinal's brief escapade to the watering hole, Papa Cardinal kept a strict watch on the nest.  If she had been gone longer, he would have nestled down on the eggs but since it was a warm day and her absence was but a few minutes, he knew the eggs were fine.  He just had to protect them from any intruders that might wish to dine upon eggs. Neither bird minded my presence which might be merely because the predators were leery and not ready to raid the nest while I was there. I do worry about the baby cardinals once they hatch as so many critters have spotted the nest already. Life on the Bayou is hard.  Not all survive. Stay safe, Cardinal Family, stay safe.