As I was backing my car down the driveway this morning, I saw a pair of cardinals sitting in a tree in the front yard. They have built a nest somewhere on our property, but we are not sure where. Shannon thinks it could be in a big bush next to the kitchen window, but I have seen a robin fly into it a few times. It doesn’t look big enough for the peaceful cohabitation of both a family of robins and cardinals. It could be in the overgrown forest of forsythia and lilac bushes on the other side of the house. I have tried to get a good photo of the cardinals to put in my work-in-progress photo gallery. No luck so far. They must have known that I didn’t have my camera with me, which is why they posed so nicely. I was tempted to run back into the house for the camera, but I knew it would end in failure.

There is another pair of cardinals at work. Well, I assume there is a pair because I have only seen the male. I was walking up the stairs to my office when I heard a “poink” sound on the ten-foot windows around the staircase. It sounded like the sound a pebble thrown at the glass would make. I heard it again and looked up to see a cardinal falling down to the ledge. It was a controlled fall. He sat for a while looking at the glass and then flew back to the neighboring magnolia tree. A second or two later I heard the same sound again accompanied by the cardinal falling/flying down to the ledge. This process repeated several times. In fact, it has now been a week of hearing “poink” coming from the staircase as the cardinal flies into the glass again and again. The tree is close to the windows so he doesn’t have time to build up much speed. Our theory is his mate has a nest in the tree and he views his reflection in the window as a threat. He may end up killing himself to protect his future offspring from his reflection.

Poink.

Poink.

Poink…