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was the first time my ears had been down at goose level.
At last the water supply was restored to the house. But there was nothing I could do about the bluebird problem — the pair had flown away the moment I approached the nesting box. Bluebirds don’t mind human beings walking around, and they come back to the same farm house and buildings each year. One year, our farm bluebirds took a fancy to a metal house on a steel pole designed for purple martins. They even stayed in it through the snows of the following winter.
This pair had adopted the nesting box at the wellhead, and the male bluebird liked to sit on the weathervane and turn in the wind. But he found that my work with pick, shovel and hacksaw was too much interference, and had not returned to the nest. By the time I finished, the eggs had gone cold in their location. Cold eggs don’t hatch, so I figured the birds would have to start again somewhere else.
Unlike house wrens and martins, bluebirds do not use a nest for the second time.
But I was wrong. As I stood on the back step, the male bluebird swooped down and went inside the nesting box. After a while he emerged and took up his favorite position on the weathervane. The arrow perch was the same, but the view was different. Then the female came over from the trees, clung to the entrance hole for a moment, and 21407popped inside.
I was wrong about the timing, too. Even though the eggs were cold, they were ready for sitting, it seems. I let the post stand in the field where I had hurriedly put.it, and two weeks later, the pair were flying in and out to feed the young fledglings. Then about two weeks after that there were six small, fluffy bluebirds sitting on the weathervane arrow, turning with the wind.
When I told my Culpeper neighbor what had happened, he was quite surprised. He had seen me handle the eggs, carry the weathervane post, and set it in the field. He thought that all that movement, and my touching the eggs in the nest to count them, would drive the bluebirds away.
“Well,” he said, “Guess it was a case of ‘have nest, will travel.’”
Dr. Hawkins is an internationally-recognized author and astronomer, who numbers among his book credits “Stonehenge Decodes” and “Beyond Stonehenge.” A resident of Woodville, Dr. Hawkins will be featured this fall on ABC in “Secrets arid Mysteries of Stonehenge."
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