expecting

A lovely blue jay couple has taken up residence in the rhododendron bush outside our kitchen window. Standing at the sink doing the dishes, we can watch the activity in the nest . The mother blue jay has been sitting on her eggs for the last week. Her mate comes and feeds her from time to time, and occasionally she takes a break to stretch her wings.

Not content to see the action from a distance, I decided I needed to get a peek into the nest while Mrs. Blue Jay was out getting some exercise. I figured that I should probably do this while Nick and Hannah weren't around, since they already think I'm seriously wacko over the whole picture-taking thing. (Well, to give them credit they think it's pretty cool AND pretty wacko, too.) So I got the rickety wooden stepladder out of the garage and climbed up to try to get a few shots before Mrs. Blue Jay returned. The rhododendron bush is in a shady corner of the house, so the light was bad and most of the shots were pretty blurry. It didn't help that I was standing on the rickety stepladder with the warning label that shows a picture of a person falling on their head. I finally turned on the flash, which did the trick, even though it makes the photos look like they were taken at night. I may be wacko, but not enough to go out and do this in the dark.

It's interesting that the nest has lots of pieces of blue plastic fibers woven throughout.

I got several pictures after Mrs. Bluejay came, back, too. She sits way down in the nest with her head pointing up. Looks uncomfortable to me, but what do I know?




Here's hoping she'll let me take a few pictures after the eggs have hatched. Stay tuned.