The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Song Sparrow in the tomato patch

Bird nesting in tomatoes

The bird nest in the tomato patch is right along the main walkway to the composting toilet, so I see Mama Bird several times a day. As long as I look in the other direction when I walk past, she stays put, lack of eye contacting tricking the song sparrow into thinking she hasn't been noticed.

Song Sparrow eggs

But when I pulled out the camera, even using the zoom from a distance was enough to spook Mama Bird. I figured I might as well look in the nest since she'd flown away for the moment, and I was pleasantly surprised to find four eggs clustered atop goat hair.

Song sparrows are one of my favorite birds, mostly because of their ubiquity in human habitats and tolerance toward people. But this is the first time I've had such an up-close-and-personal experience with their nesting behavior. I'm looking forward to daily views of baby birds, perhaps in a week or two.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I love the song sparrow too. Theirs is the song we always hear when hiking in the White Mountains here in New Hampshire. it is the sound that reminds us of many great hikes along high rocky ridges on perfect summer days-in short-a happy sound for us. Cant wait to see those babies. There is hardly anything sweeter than mama bird on her nest.

Comment by Deb Sat Jul 18 19:41:21 2015





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