This is a story with a lot of perhapses and maybes based on a simple fact: There is much we dont know about birds.

The nest appeared one morning in early June, as unexpected as the tutu-shaped mushrooms that pop up in our lawn after a hard rain. A sliver of translucent plastic poked out from one side of the wide cone, whose design of bent twigs, leaves and ropey strands of silver dichondra (plucked from my garden) was more Frank Gehry messy than Philip Johnson classic.

How could we not have seen its owners building it in a rose trellis we walk underneath daily to get to the garden hose and its faucet?

In April, we had been a little too curious and close to a cardinal that set up house in a Texas pomegranate not far from our deck. A miscreant squirrel that taunted her with its acrobatics didnt help. She was sitting but abandoned that nest without laying eggs.

Was this the same couple? Cardinals are monogamous in their sense of the term, Gary Clark, the Chronicles birding columnist, tells me. They pair up for one season at a time but might find different mates the next season.

Many songbirds live in our yards trees and eat from our seed-producing shrubs. Cardinals have been abundant in the last year or so, and while they are super-selective, its impossible for humans to tell them apart.

Whoever they were, we knew this couple needed space. To avoid walking under the trellis, we left the hose unrolled and began walking around the house to turn on the faucet. Incredibly, we had a, well, birds-eye-view from inside. The trellis stands about 3 feet from our bedroom window, and the nest was tilted toward us.

As cooped up as we have been since March, this was a thrilling development. All spring, while our world spun apart in the chaos of the pandemic, the garden grounded us. Now nature was going to demonstrate release.

The Mrs. situated herself one day with her back to us, as if she was confident no predators would penetrate the thorny stems of LaMarque behind her. Still, she was hyper-alert. We could neither raise and lower the window shades without startling her, nor leave them open. She sensed even the slightest movement on our side of the window, or perhaps saw us with her peripheral vision. Maybe she could hear our feet on the wood floors.

We had to be stealth to watch the show, but we peeked out every few hours in the beginning. If we stood on our toes and peered through a slit between the shades and the window frame, we could see through the window screen, into the nest.

Time has become so hazy, I cant say exactly how many days passed a few until we saw the eggs while the Mrs. was out for breakfast or lunch or whatever. There were two, smaller than thimbles, bluish with brown splotches. Soon she was bringing food, some kind of regurgitated mush she poked into the open mouths of the small pink beings stirring deep in the nest.

One day the chicks poked up their heads like wobbly little dinosaurs. Bald and blind and not even half-covered with their first feathers, they had geeky sprouts atop their heads baby tufts! and beaks that gaped open constantly, hungry. During this altricial stage, baby birds are completely helpless, Clark says.

Papa stood guard while Mama foraged. The tuft atop his bright red head stood up straight when we came around or he sensed some other need to look aggressive. Although they were vigilant all day, the adults disappeared at night, and I imagined them bone tired from all that intense parenting, up there in the trees somewhere. Maybe they were in our big pecan, or a neighbors sprawling live oak.

Probably to their dismay, I stepped within a few feet of the nest on June 18, holding out that human appendage, my iPhone, just long enough to videotape the chicks while I thought the adults were gone. The babies lifted their ragged wings ever so slightly, not looking at me. I dont think they could see yet. On June 19 they were more alert, eyes open and fidgeting.

Then came the morning of the 20th, when I went out to check on the nest, and they were gone. My heart sank. Was it my fault? Had they fallen out? Had something eaten them? Where was the neighbors big Siamese cat that prowls our yard?

But the parents were around, chirping. And sure enough, a weak peep came from the yaupon shrub beside our air conditioning unit, maybe 10 feet from the nest. One fledgling was hiding deep among the stems, in the shadows.

The second fledgling bounced out from the boxwoods below the rose trellis onto the grass, a little too careless. Trying to herd it toward cover, Papa flew up and down, up and down, from the fence to the grass. If this was a flying lesson, it wasnt going well. The fledgling, a funny little fluff ball of gray-brown down above toothpick legs, flapped its slightly oversized wings and looked at me, then at Papa, breathing heavily.

As it hopped through the fence slats toward its sibling, I positioned myself nearby to watch. Maybe I had begun to look like part of the furniture, but this baby didnt seem to know to be afraid. I was close enough to see the thin strips of white flesh around its beak, as if someone had endowed it with a clowns face.

It hobbled and lurched toward me and before I knew what was happening, the chick was standing on top of my foot, nearly weightless except for the gentle grip of its tiny feet. It stayed there a few seconds, a brief miracle in which time stopped. Then it went awkwardly on its way, toward a garden bed, where it disappeared into a mound of red fountain grass.

The last time Im sure I saw one of the fledglings, a little later that morning, one of them had made its way around the front of the house. It slipped under the fence, returning to the backyard, and hid under a border of tall liriope as an adult male landed nearby, chirping loudly. Then another the real Papa? chased the other male away.

Maybe two days later, in the afternoon, a few cardinals showed up alongside sparrows near our front door. The fledglings had grown fast, but could they really look so grown already?

No, Clark tells me. They would have been branchlings then, living in trees but fed by their parents for at least a week. Branchlings dont fly until they have developed tails and other juvenile feathers and can forage for themselves.

Although food availability can speed up their growth, our young cardinals probably havent gone far yet, Clark says. By his clock, the branchlings may be learning to fly now. Assuming they are still alive. According to David Allen Sibleys new book, What Its Like to Be a Bird, songbirds tend to have a 50-50 chance of making it to adulthood.

I listen and watch for them constantly. One day this week, talking on the phone, I happened to be looking through a window near my desk, barely aware of cardinals and sparrows foraging near the street until a hawk descended from nowhere, lightning fast, and snatched up someone. I recognized it by its reddish-brown and white coloring, but the hawk didnt even have to stop to carry off its prey.

Wednesday near dusk, soon after I spoke to Clark, cardinals and mockingbirds chirped up an urgent racket out front. I stepped out to investigate. And there was a very young juvenile, making its clumsy way across trees in the front yard, closely followed by a female adult. It disappeared but the chirping continued.

A small army of birds, including cardinals, had perched along a utility wire. I wondered if they were all watching the show of this little one learning to fly. Then the cat slinked out from behind a fence. I shooed it away.

molly.glentzer@chron.com

Originally posted here:

How I found freedom from COVID-19 isolation with feathered friends - Houston Chronicle