My Bluebird is a Bitch

She is. She really is. She has completed her nest beneath my deck, seems to have laid some eggs, and she and her husband seem to be tending them with sporadic care.  Her duties are recessed in the early evenings when she has been freed by her mate.  She spends these precious moments smearing insects either on the deck posts or against my windows.  One would think this new mother would take advantage of the free time and instead watch the sunset with a nice martini!  She flits from breakfast nook window to living room window to my bedroom window (all on one side of the house) determined to get my attention.  When she finally sees me in the room, (I wave my arms high over my head against some light background to catch her eye--no photos) she stops and stares at me for the longest time.  She looks as if she is trying to figure out how to communicate or if indeed I can be that large and odd looking and be allowed to live.


In the early mornings, immediately after the sun is up, her mate gives her another reprieve from nest sitting, and she flies out to collect a bug or two and then returns to the deck eating part of her repast and painting the leftover guts on the backs of my deck chairs after which she promptly drops last night's digested meal on the seat of one of the deck chairs.

A short time later, after she is satiated, she comes again tapping at the bedrooms windows (this all happens about 6:00 AM!), only this time she is grumbling and hissing under her breath and puffing out her chest as she talks to herself.  She looks at me as I sit up in bed bleary-eyed and then mutters and shakes her head.  It sounds like angry muttering and spitting, really.  More guttural than the bird's lyrical song.  Is she complaining about the lack of air-conditioning in her abode, the lack of a window, the fact that due to lawn mowing I moved the hammock further away from where she used to stop on her way into the birdhouse?  Or is she regretting  her decision to start a family after this reality has set in?