Babies! By Avonlea

A robin's nest on the left and four little Pacific-Slope Flycatchers on the right looking squished.

     Parkdale is hatching little chicks left and right. I wish everyone could come to the country for a tour of the hatchings and peace and quiet with the birds. Mom had me read a few sections in Madeline L'Engle's book, A Circle Of Quiet. I thought this paragraph was especially interesting: "Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse: we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethans used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls and articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence."
     In the mornings up at our farm house, I awake and lie for a few minutes thinking how nice it would be to stay in bed for a bit. Finally, I sweep myself up and rush out the door, afraid I've already missed something of the day. We stayed a week and I got to experience the hot dry weather that summer has brought us. The creek has shriveled up, there are no deep places any more. Mosquitos are everywhere but I don't mind them half so much as other years because of my experience in a swamp in Florida for 2 weeks. Everyday we walked to "the snake trail." We named it the snake trail when we found a rubber boa there. Gypsy and Comet are water dogs (especially Gypsy) and I snapped a few pictures of them at the pond on the snake trail.



Gypsy flings herself in every time, literally doing a belly flop.

Gypsy is very stubborn and determined so when Rowan threw something in that sunk, Gypsy just kept right on searching for it. She was putting her whole head under the water and swimming around in circles for at least 5 minutes without pause.

Fourth of July sunset.

 

 

Fourth of July!

 

Coming up from the creek.

A Quail chick. There were quail everywhere with their chicks.

5 eggs in the barn.





Three Robin's eggs.

 

Two chicks, one egg.

 

The next day, the late egg breaks in two.

 

Three baby Robins.

 We actually got back from the farm house today and this morning I took the pictures of the baby hatching. The nest was right above my head so I had to take a picture then see it. I was so excited! We found another Robin's nest in our Dogwood trees yesterday. Here it is with the robin inside it. She has three eggs as well.