Bye, Bye {Baby} Birdie

On the eve before the last day of school in May, I was yelling for all the boys to come to the dinner table. Dinner was ready, and it's an evening ritual to gather everyone up from the four corners of the earth....I mean from the house and yard. Kanyon came running in from outside and was excitedly telling me about a baby bird he found on the walkway. "There's a baby bird on the rocks" he said. I thought it must have been a dead one, because between us and Grandma, there are 3 cats that roam the property who kill lots of mice and birds and just leave the remnants lying around. So I inquired if it was dead, and told him not to touch dead animals. He insisted it was alive, so I decided to forgo the gathering of children for dinner, and I went outside to check out his claim.

We have a lot of mature trees in our yard, so several times a year, we find empty bird nests that have blown out of the trees and onto the grass after a storm. Sometimes we find bird eggs on the ground that are cracked, broken, and empty. Once we even saw a mama bird feed its babies in their nest up in the tree branches. But I have never seen a live baby bird on the ground, and I was not expecting to see one either! But Kanyon's claims were true, and I was so surprised at what I saw! So I ran inside and got my camera; I didn't know how much longer the small bird would remain on the ground (remember...the cats?!).

I took several photos of it laying on the rocks, and we stayed by it for about 5 minutes before returning to the house to eat dinner before it got cold; Josh and the other boys were patiently waiting at the dinner table for us.

After dinner, we went back outside to see the baby bird again, but alas it had unfortunately (and expectedly) disappeared. One can only guess what became of it! ;) I am glad that I grabbed my camera and took these photos right then, because the opportunity would've been missed if I'd waited. I am glad that I stopped the rush of life for a moment to really see the beauty in God's creations around me. It was a happy moment for Kanyon, and truly a "joy in the journey" moment for me.