The Birds

 

Where's Alfred Hitchcock when you need him! After the pretty little parula stopped fighting his reflection in the window, a sparrow started doing the same thing. Yesterday when I went out to my side deck I saw a robin fly out of a fuschia that I hang there. I looked and, sure enough, she had almost finished building a nest in the fuschia. I came back inside and tried to finish my breakfast.
This would mean that every year that robin would come back and build her nest in the fuschia. It would complicate watering it. The fuschia is there first of all because I really like the flower. It reminds me of Ireland where I saw along some country lanes hedgerows of fuschia ten feet tall. It has also become very attractive to hummingbirds, who probably wouldn't come if the robin were there.
So I left my half-inished breakfast and went out and took the nest out of the fuschia and threw it off the deck. Then I thought the robin would come back and build another. So I took down the fuschia and sat it on the floor of the deck.
In a minute I looked out and there on the lawn looking up at where the fuschia and her nest used to be was the stunned robin with some straw in her mouth. My laughter overcame my guilt. And my St. Francis cross had not burned a hole in my chest.