baby cave swallow!
It’s raining tonight in San Antonio. I love the sound. It’s a light rain, gentle. And the smell is nice. Something soft and gentle and difficult to define. San Antonio is a city filled with plants. You don’t really smell the plants. But you also don’t smell hard concrete the way you do in some other cities in downtown when it rains.
And.
The balcony resident cave swallow couple just had a baby. Yay! Yay! Yay! Birth announcement!
I found this out this morning when I stumped out onto the balcony in a sleep haze to have a smoke and sat down and lit my smoke and looked at the patio and there was this odd tiny white cone shaped object on the ground under their nest.
Usually, there is only bird poo under their nest. (Irony, I am cleaning up for wild birds now instead of a nice furry cat that purrs or nice furry dogs who cuddle. How did this happen? But I digress.)
So I am sitting on the balcony. Staring at that more than tiny white cone shaped thing on the balcony concrete under the bird nest maybe too long, not quite computing what it is. Did the birds bring home a tiny piece of Styrofoam and kick it out? It doesn’t look like Styrofoam. What is it? What? What is white and shaped like that that they would bring home and then throw out of the nest?
And then it clicks.
It’s an egg shell!
A baby cave swallow egg shell!
(Look, I am comatose before noon. You want Smart Max? Max that can recognize a miniature cave swallow egg shell out of context on the fly? Come back after noon.)
There is a baby cave swallow up there!
Yay! Yay! Yay!
The baby cave swallow does not sound like a baby. It sounds just like its parents. This is funny to me. There will be cave swallow comments coming from the nest, which I am used to. I tell myself they are “hello you gorgeous thing” but they are probably “don’t pick up the chairs again you giant thing it freaks us out.” But now, the same little comments are coming when the parent bird is not moving its beak. So, either the cave swallows have enrolled in a Khan Academy ventriloquey class and REALLY excelled. Or that is the baby up there talking sash. Which makes sense to me. I sounded just like that as a kid. Go, Baby Cave Swallow, Go!
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Love & Kisses,
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Your Baby Cave Swallow In the House Adams Girl
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