"Who made her pwetty hair so ugly?"
The wail escalated as my daughter raced around waving the doll accusingly in every family members face. Even the dogs and cats were facing the angry jury.
"My dolly has a bald patch!"
The cries reached ear-shattering proportions. As I stared in confusion at the balding doll, a colourful movement in the apricot tree at our front door demanded my attention. There, among the flowering branches, was a gaudy nest sporting pwetty orange wool. The exact same wool as the tragic-looking doll.
Gently I re-directed the fury of the child from her sibling and towards the nest.
"Look Darling! There's a mama bird who decided your dolly's hair looked better in her baby birds nest." I pointed. Everyone held their breath. We expected feathers to fly as the little girl besieged the guilty birds lofty perch and destroyed the nest to reclaim her wool.
"Oh!!!" She sniffed, wiped her eyes and waved at the nest.
"That's ok, mama bird! You can have more wool for your babies". To our astonishment, the sad doll was held aloft to be striped totally of her wooly hair. Breathing a sigh of relief I carefully took the doll from her outstretched hands and offered to practice hairdressing.
In honour of all the nesting birds and new hatchlings this is our sweet feathered (ummmm - wooly) story for @nelinoeva and her SMaP Weekly Bird Contest
The mountainside is all a-twitter with a multitude of birds racing to build nests and raise young here on our homestead. The exhaustive efforts of the weavers, the swift movements of the sunbirds, the mud-bearing swallows engineering, the delicate flight of the little wagtail, the raucous noises of the SA starlings, the majestic nesting of the raptors. And then these most gaudy and bizarre nesting architects - who evaded photography totally - the tiny common sparrows.
