I sat thinking for a few minutes as I began to write for my journal today… thinking I’d like to make a poem to go with the baby bird picture and finally gave it up when I couldn’t think of anything that seemed even half as good as the little four stanza poem by Emily Dickinson.  You know the one:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

BY EMILY DICKINSON

   

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

This is the little Mother sitting on her eggs, two of them... on February 27th.

When she left the nest on March 2 to get something to eat, I got this picture.

On March 3rd she was still waiting for the big event.

...Then on March 9th, a couple of days after he hatched, this little guy was hungry... and demanding. Notice the other egg has still unhatched. 

March 14th, just five days ago, the little guy has grown a lot... Still no other baby.

Today, March 19... this is the little guy.  I guess the Mother has given up on the other egg.  She spends all day circling far and wide to find food for the baby and for herself... what an amazing transformation in just ten days.  We've got to be very careful around here from now on.  I don't want the little bird to be scared into trying to fly away before it's exactly the right time.