A Bird on the Porch is Worth...?

One of the quirks my hubby and I share is that we like to keep small white lights strung up all year. But not everywhere. Just over the front door. We have a roof over the front steps that has a hanging light in the ceiling, but it doesn't illuminate much. You can't really fit a larger light bulb in the fixture so the entry to the house always looks somewhat gloomy and ominous unless properly enhanced. Several years ago we put up these small lights around Christmas time and well, they just sort of stayed there. In the bubble, this is probably a faux paux, but I really don't care, it looks better to hubby and I, so I guess the "critics" will just have to get used to the idea.

Anyway, the lights are just sort of strung up under the porch roof which arches up from one side to the other. They aren't closely connected to the roof, so they kind of look like starlight, in my whimsical observation. But because they aren't closely attached, there are gaps in the criss-crossing of the wires. I never particularly paid attention to this before, until I began noticing something when I would go out to get the paper this winter. In the dark of the morning, the aforementioned dingy hanging light automatically comes on when the storm door is opened. So when I go out at 6 am to retrieve the paper that never quite makes it to the front porch, the light comes on and I can see for a few moments as I scurry out and find the errant paper amongst the bushes or the ivy. In the few moments of light, I noticed that there were bird droppings around the front door. I looked up, but of course, I was looking at the small ledge directly over the door. Nothing there. I shrugged, figured some poor frozen bird used the ledge as a shelter and forgot about it. Until I began noticing that the droppings were increasing. I never saw a bird in the morning anywhere. But it had to be nesting or something there as the droppings were so evident. But I could never see one.

My husband was observing the same thing and he couldn't figure it out either. Until one early evening, right after dinner, he came out to the kitchen and asked me to follow him out to the front door. We have a semicircle of glass over the door which allows us to see the lights without opening the door. And sure enough, there on the criss-crossed wires was a bird fluffed up and holding onto the wires. It was out of the wind, rain, snow and whatever else Mother Nature threw at it. It was safe and warm and dry. Mystery solved. It kind of looks like a cardinal, only slightly bigger.

Of course, I have dreamed up myriads of stories about why its there and not in some tree somewhere, or even hiding out in the bushes with the rest of the birds. He's an outcast, he's got bad eating habits, he insulted the "head bird" and has been cast out and shunned for the winter. Anyway, I check to see if it is there from time to time and so far he is (I am calling it a he, but I'm really not sure of that--males of the cardinal species are usually brightly colored and this one is not particularly red). It's kind of like having a pet, only not really. And I really need to clean up the step under where it has been relieving itself. But it is sort of interesting to see it there, so close to the house, resting in the swaying wires of the small white lights. Waiting for the warm weather like the rest of us.