MURDER MYSTERY

We have a flat-roof house - southwest style.  So occasionally my husband has to get out  there and blow all the leaves, pine needles, pine cones, etc. off the roof.  The other day when he did it, he also blew out the canalies (rain spouts so the rain water will run off the roof).  He didn't realize that a dove had built a nest in one, so when he blew it out it blew out her nest that had 2 babies in it.  He felt really bad and didn't know what to do, so he went to the garage and got a shallow bucket thing (low and wide) and "built" a new nest and put the baby birds back in (he used gloves so as not to get his scent on them).  Then he put the new "nest" bucket in a tree close to the canalie.  We were worried that the mother would not find her babies and/or would not accept the new nest, but she did.  I kept telling myself that I should go take a picture of them because they were so cute, but I never did.  A couple of times when we accidentally walked too fast towards the tree, she would fly out in a hurry, fly to the ground and flutter around on the ground pretending to have a broken wing.  I guess that was to draw our attention to her so we would not attack her babies. :0)

The next afternoon my husband accidentally walked too fast towards the tree (he'd only done it one time before).  Sure enough she flew out and did her broken wing routine.  Then another dove (the father?) flew down to the grass with her.  He walked around beside her while she continued to pretend to be hurt.  Then they flew up onto the wall and sat a few minutes, then flew off.  We sat outside for about 45 minutes and never saw her come back, so we were worried about her.

The next morning, we sat down to breakfast and my husband looked out the patio door and said, "Uh oh!"  He said there were feathers all over the patio.  We went out to look and sure enough, there were no birds at all in the nest.  We looked all over for them and didn't find them. What we did find though was a pile of tiny feathers, tiny feathers all over the patio, and with the tiny feather pile were some larger feathers.  So we figured that the mother must have come back sometime last night, and in the night something must have gotten all of them.  :0(  There were no bodies, so whatever got them carried all of them off.  The only thing I could think of is that something - our neighborhood Hawk or our neighborhood Owl - must have gotten them and killed them and carried them off.  Maybe he did one at a time, or maybe killed all of them and carried them all at once.  We'll never know, but we also know he visits our yard for the tasty baby bunnies.  He has killed the babies and left them in the yard and we don't know why he did that either.  Did he kill too many and couldn't eat them all?  Was the bunny bigger than he could carry?  Who knows?  And we don't know if it's the Hawk or the Owl.  We've see both, and we know the Hawk loves to come sit on our fence or in one of our trees. 

Well, that's the Circle of Life.....