Losing the Purple Finch War
Every year for Mother’s Day, instead of cut flowers that will die, my husband (at my request) buys me four beautiful hanging red geraniums for our front porch. And every year, the purple finches insist on building their nest in one of them. I feel I have a good working relationship with Mama Finch. ”Here’s the deal,” I whisper annually to her as she peers out at me from within the stems of the geraniums. “I won’t bother you and your nest as long as you let me water my plant every other day or so.” So normally we proceed onward to summer, me carefully watering the plant and not disturbing the nest, she eyeing me suspiciously from the telephone wire near the porch. The small brownish Mama Martin and her slightly red-chested husband are inseparable. He doesn’t sit in the nest, but he’s always nearby, watching. He even brings her food. How sweet. This year, however, our normally amicable relationship turned ugly. Once a month, I take the plants down to deadhead the spent geraniums and add fertilizer. In fact, this is how I usually find the nest. This year on a deadheading expedition, I spotted the nest’s four cream-colored speckled eggs. No problem. I carefully Miracle Gro-d (Miracle Grew?!) around the nest and rehung the plants, careful to return the nested one to its original position. Things continued as normal. Every other day or so, Mama Martin would fly out to the telephone wire while I watered carefully around the nest. On my next deadheading day, I noticed, sadly, that there were only two eggs. We have two outdoor cats, who sit, tail-twitchingly awaiting the births of the baby birds every year, but they have never tried to reach the nest. Soon the two babies arrived. A few weeks went by, and when I peeked into the nest the babies always seemed to be sleeping when I quietly watered around them. One tragic day, however, a drop of water must have splashed one of the youngsters and woken it up. It flapped out of the nest, trying desperately to fly, perhaps a bit before its time. It fluttered to the ground after a brief stop on the holly bush below.