the circle of life

A mother bird built a nest outside my room, on the escaping ladders.

It is quite a sight.

Sometimes I kneel down and observe it;

Sometimes I glance at it when I pass by, just being curious about what the birds are doing.

Other times.. i climb out of the window to get a close look.. (when the mother bird is absent and leave the baby birds alone in the net)

I'm accustomed to glance at the net now.. but the net has been empty for a while.

It was about two weeks ago when my mom first discovered the nest outside our window. My mom and I got very excited and was expecting to see new born little birds. (I've never seen them before, except pictures in the magazines, because I couldn't get close enough to a bird's net). The bird's little eggs were blue, the kind of blue that is bright and pretty, like the color of sky or ocean. One, two, three, four.... four eggs^_^ We counted.

Several days after, baby birds came out. Awwwwwww... How cute they were. They didn't have feathers and their eyes couldn't open. When the mother bird came back to her nest with worms, baby birds opened their mouths as big as they could, voraciously wanted to have more worms. Since they couldn't see, they simply moved their heads in all directions, trying to figure out where mom was.

The most amazing thing was the scene I saw from above the nest. I was so eager to see the baby birds with their mouths open that I once climbed out the window and imitated mother bird's voice. As soon as the baby birds heard my imitation, they thought mom came back to feed them(little birds couldn't open their eyes yet) and opened their mouths. Wow... fours bird with their mouths open, in a nest, is like a pot of flowers. Their inside skin was orange/yellow/red. How pretty!!! I imitated once more in order to take some pictures while feeling bad that I tricked them. I love the pictures so much. Everytime I look at them, I say to myself:"this is nature. This is life. This is beauty. Wow...."(pictures attached above)

Birds grow so fast.... sooooooooo much faster than a human being takes.....

Within 2 or 3 weeks, they developed their feathers and soon learnt to fly. It was kind of funny to see them standing at the edge of the nest, trying to balance themselves before they leant how to fly. Mother bird and Father bird took turns to take care of their "home", but I could never tell who was who because they looked exactly the same to me!

I even feel kind of sad that the birds are never going to come back again.. maybe next spring at this time. Who knows? They left the empty nest outside my window, reminding me of nature and life at any moment.