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School near McLean, where I was employed as a naturalist.
From the kitchen window, I watched the male on his perch as he surveyed and guarded his territory. I could also see the nest box and observed both male and female enter the box with, first, nest material and, later, food for the four nestlings.
I became very attached to that bluebird family — too attached. I lost my scientific objectivity and became personally possessive. No one can possess a bluebird in all its wild beauty.
Late one afternoon in early May, as I pulled the car into our driveway, I immediately sensed something wrong — dreadfully wrong. The male was on his perch and calling as only a bluebird in distress can call. I jumped from the car and ran to the box. I opened it to find a black rat snake coiled inside; he was bulging from having consumed the female and the young.
I respect and admire snakes, but always experience a rush of instinctive fear when I encounter them up close. Even with that element of small terror, I reached in, grabbed the snake by the tail and yanked him out. I killed him by smashing a great stone on his head. My feelings of frustrated outrage overcame my sense of the realities of predation.
Soon after, I wrote a letter to a good friend, an accomplished and knowledgeable nature writer. "What's needed," I wrote, "is a support group for bluebird lovers who have had a snake rob a nest box."
I relate this happening, for I want readers to know that I understand their hopelessness in the face of snake predation. Still, it is a fact of life for bluebirds. "Don't confuse the fact of predation with the effect of predation."
Write Virginia naturalist John Trott care of this newspaper: P.O. Box 59, Washington, Va. , 22747.
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