Mockingbird Wonder

Lots of mockingbird activity since last Sunday's hatchling spotting. This morning I followed the brood from the kitchen window. As one bold fledgling hopped across the driveway, stopping every few inches to exercise his feathered wings, his parents hovered from fence, to hedge, to electrical wire, and then to the basketball goal, jerking their heads around nervously -- chirruping and squawking at me watching from my stoop vantage point. I mean him no harm, sir, m'am! But I did intend to get a picture of the fledgling.

Yesterday Papa Mockingbird buzzed the back of my neck when I was cooking supper on the grill. I had ventured too close. My son, freshly home from freshman year in college and newly sophisticated himself (yeah, whatever), did't share my sense of mockingbird wonder. Rather, he seemed downright annoyed when I enlisted him to keep guard over my back as I climbed the step stool to the nest in the Ligustrum. I got a picture, but not a good one. Oh well, it will have to do. Both the parents and my son were too agitated for me to try again. Unfortunately, I saw only two chicks in the nest and evidence of the unfortunate sibling in the neighbor's yard.