edith is back and is welcomed by the pesky neighbors

Every year the pesky neighbors have a house guest. Well… more like a driveway guest. And, every year, before their visitor leaves, new life is brought into the world. Edith is back. Again.

It starts with one egg. The next step is the over-protective peskies enforce new driveway rules — like where you are allowed to drive, walk and so forth. This year, my great uncle didn’t get the ‘baby in the driveway’ memo and smashed the first egg. But Edith laid another in the same spot, and then two more. You can barely make out the speckled eggs in the gravel, and I’m not sure why any mother (even Edith) would choose to place her precious and delicate not-yet-born children in such a spot. But every year, it’s the same thing.

Edith takes pretty good care of her offspring (other than for the fact they are in the middle of a driveway), and will ‘fake’ a broken wing if you get too close to the nest. She tried pretty darned hard to lure me away as I snapped the photo above, but I didn’t fall for the whole injured killdeer thing. Obviously.

This bird egg event in the driveway of those pesky neighbors during nesting season has been going on for years, and Mom tells a cute story that happened one spring season. Of course, she explains the following in great detail and all I remember are the basics, but a few years ago a storm was brewing in the ville. Looking out the window to see how hard the wind was blowing (because of course that’s the thing you’re NOT supposed to do when a storm approaches), she sees a whole flock of killdeer lining up in the driveway. Like a whole bunch of them! She explains that she read somewhere these birds will come back to the same territory time and time again. It’s like they all arrived in time to take care of Mommy Edith and future siblings as bad weather rolled in! How cool is that?