my back deck

It is amazing what I see out there.

We have a family of chipmunks in our yard this year.

One came up on the deck when I was out there reading and our Puli dog was sleeping. It came up (I sat real still) and sniffed Bela, then left the way it came, climbing down the Rhododendron bush.

Today it was a group of young chickadees who were flying in and out of the trees that surround our deck. They would be on a branch high up and then simply drop like a rock and then fly to another place. I'd never seen birds drop like that before flying. I watched them for half-an-hour, moving through the foliage.

Then I thought about our Robin on the front porch in her nest. This group of 4 or 5 chickadees were obviously young. If the Mama Robin had eggs, wouldn't they have hatched long ago--like these young chickadees?

And the male hasn't returned, yet she sits on the nest hour after hour, leaving only occasionally to feed, I hope. She is so stoic about her pose. We can stop and talk to her, 4 feet away, and she doesn't flee. I still am worried about what is going on. It seems so odd to me. Where is her mate? Why is she, now in summer, still on the nest? I fret about her now.
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