Silence

Nick brought Nolan down to stay with me today so I had to take a chance and show him the baby birds.  I'd noticed a lessening of daddy sparrow's incessant chirping but I was surprised to see only one baby sparrow still in the nest.  The others had flown the coop, so to speak, and I hadn't seen it happen.

This afternoon I noticed a distinct silence out on the balcony and had to check the nest one more time.  It was empty.  The last baby sparrow had found the nerve to jump off my 6th floor balcony.

The silence is welcome in a way but also a bit sad.  These tiny little creatures followed their instincts to painstakenly build their nest of twigs, paper, and feathers and then stayed and protected their babies until they could fly out into the great unknown.  In a small way, this is much like what we humans do for our own offspring.  

Nature is truly a wonderful and mysterious thing.