Three weeks ago, we had a pair of Eastern bluebirds in our nest box, as we have the previous three spring seasons that we’ve lived here.
Based on their activity, I was pretty sure that the Mama Bluebird was incubating her eggs and the pair would soon be feeding their new babies.
On Monday, June 5th, I thought I heard some house sparrows near the box, so I went outside to see if these predators needed to be chased off. I saw no house sparrows, but I came across something worse.
There on the ground, next to the birdbath some 15 feet from the nest box was Mama Bluebird. She was dead.
Oh no. Oh no. No. No. No.
I just kept saying it in disbelief. You know how when something bad happens, you close your eyes and are convinced the horrible thing won’t be there when you open them? I did that, and it was still there.
Jimmy heard me and came out of his wood shop to find me with Mama Bluebird in my hand, gently stroking her feathers and shaking my head.
She was lovely. Completely intact. No evidence of struggle or window strike or disease or attack by a feral cat. Tawny gray back, faint rust and white breast, brilliant blue tail feathers. Perfect in every way, except the life had left her little body.
I stood there and cried.
I don’t know what could have happened. We have to take the nest box down. I don’t think my heart can take this anymore.
Jimmy hugged me and let me cry it out. He knows that eastern bluebirds are my most beloved birds. He was stunned as well.
I don’t have any photos of Mama Bluebird in that state because I don’t take photos of dead birds. Lots of people do on the Facebook birding groups, and I hate it when they do that.
I knew I wanted to bury her with respect. So I got some blue microfiber that I’d bought recently to line a keepsake box Jimmy had made me. I wrapped her body in the soft fabric, grabbed a pick and shovel, dug a little grave in the woods and piled slate on top of it so I’d be able to find her resting place.
The next step was to check the nest box. What about the babies? I opened the side of the box, fearing the worst—baby bluebirds decapitated by non-native, invasive house sparrows. Although it had never happened to any of the broods from our box, it happens every day. House sparrows are vicious predators of Eastern bluebirds.
The nest looked fine. I put my hand ever so gingerly into the nest, expecting to feel dead baby birds—and felt nothing.
I took out the nest. Like Mama Bluebird, it was perfect. A cozy bed of pine straw and grasses, with a clean little cup toward the back. But no eggs had ever been laid in this nest. There were no shells, no evidence of fecal sacs that had been cleaned out by Mama. She hadn’t yet laid any eggs. Maybe she had been unable.
Having never encountered this, I put the nest back in the box, on the off chance that the bird I had just buried was not the nesting female in this box.
Papa bluebird came back to the box shortly after, singing and calling for his mate and looking into the entrance. He sang off and on until evening—one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. No female joined him.
I was struck that morning by how quickly I was reduced from a fairly steady 62-year-old woman to a crying 6-year-old child.
Bluebirds have to work so hard to survive. Why did she have to die? It isn’t fair.
I had prayed for these birds daily, as I have done every season. I prayed so hard. How could this happen? (I guess that’s a topic for another blog post.)
I did my best to shake off the sadness and stay busy. That evening when I went out to watch birds at the fire pit, I noticed lots of activity. Baby bird season was in full swing. I was surrounded by life.
A hairy woodpecker, probably only a few days out of the nest, was teetering on top of our new garden fence, watching and learning as Dad pecked peanuts from our feeder. I had never seen a fledgling hairy woodpecker. I took a few photos and felt the happiness of a new discovery and the energy of new life.
I watched Eastern towhees, cardinals, house finches and blue jays swoop in and grab the sunflower seeds and raw peanuts I had put out for them on a log near the fire pit. Then I noticed some commotion in the thicket behind the stump.
I walked over to the thicket slowly and peered in. There were three fledgling blue jays squawking and jockeying for food from their parent, who was grabbing easy food for his hungry brood. I’d seen a baby blue jay before, but not this soon out of the nest, not with siblings and not feeding like this. I couldn’t stop watching them—their awkward, unsteady perches, their “bad hair day” look and their eyes, which had yet to find their piercing look.
I was witnessing life all around me—tender, funny, chaotic, needy and beautiful. The morning’s sorrow was receding, giving way to gratitude for this view of nature growing and thriving.
Two days later I removed the unused nest from the bluebird box, thinking Papa might call in another potential mate.
He sang from sunrise to sunset for over a week until finally a new mate appeared.
As I write this post at the end of June, Papa and his new mate are nearly finished with the new nest. I grabbed this grainy photo of Mama Two getting ready to take a big wad of pine straw and grass into the box as she completes her preparations.
I pray that this new pair will be successful. That they will stay healthy, that the summer heat will not be too harsh for the babies, that predators will stay far away.
I pray, but I know this is completely out of my control. All I can do is provide an eastern-facing nest box that’s clean and a site with little disturbance. Nature will do the rest…or it won’t. I need to just open my hands and let go.
Life. It is beautiful, brutal, joyous, sad, rhythmic, chaotic, predictable, mysterious and often very unfair. The challenge is to somehow hold all of this in your mind and heart all at once…and lightly. Ever so lightly.
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