{"id":149,"date":"2011-05-09T22:05:08","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T06:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taojones.net\/?p=149"},"modified":"2011-05-09T22:26:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T06:26:03","slug":"fierce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"Fierce"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fierce<\/a>
\nFierce<\/a>, a photo by Tygh<\/a> on Flickr.<\/span><\/div>\n

She is much tougher than she looks.<\/p>\n

I made a mistake tonight. A pair of chickadees hijacked a nest box from some Nuthatches a couple of weeks ago. Anyway,\u00a0I hadn’t seen anyone come in or out of the box for a couple of days and so I was concerned that there might be a problem. I imagined an abandoned nest, perhaps some dead chicks or a parent. So I staked out the nest box for a while. I watched for what I thought was a long time and I saw no activity. After a while, I went outside and tapped on it and listened for any movement inside. Eventually, I stood on a chair and tried to peek into the entrance hole.<\/p>\n

When I was pretty sure there was nobody home, I lifted the box down and carefully removed the lid…<\/p>\n

… and there she was.<\/p>\n

At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I saw the edges of a nest and just darkness at the center of the box. Once I could see a little better, I saw her tail and her head. She was not moving, she was hunkering down. I thought she might be dead, but something told me that she wasn’t. She was defending her precious clutch with astounding discipline.<\/p>\n

I quickly put the lid back on the box and hung it back where I found it. Then I looked at the box for a while making sure that she didn’t leave her eggs. She didn’t.<\/p>\n

I am so sorry for disturbing her. If she is going to use that box again, she is going to have to feel safe. I hope that if the nestlings fledge that she ultimately remembers that the box was successful and forgets the brief but serious invasion of privacy that she suffered this evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fierce, a photo by Tygh on Flickr. She is much tougher than she looks. I made a mistake tonight. A pair of chickadees hijacked a nest box from some Nuthatches a couple of weeks ago. Anyway,\u00a0I hadn’t seen anyone come in or out of the box for a couple of days and so I was … Continue reading Fierce<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-light"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}