family affairs?

I went down to the pond yesterday morning and sat down to observe the scene (I try to keep a chair by the pond for Zen contemplation). All was quiet for a few minutes and then, all of a sudden, one Willet appeared, then another and then four more. They were all lined up in attack formation and peeled off, one by one, to dive bomb me as I was sitting harmlessly at the edge of the pond. Where did all these Willets come from? Until today, there were never more than two. Were these perhaps the offspring of the year, flying like their elders and going into attack mode to chase the intruder away?

This was not the only ensemble of its kind. A group of six Barn Swallows, at least four of which had short tails, proved to be a family with newly fledged youngsters. The young birds were certainly trying to imitate their elders at aerial hunting but finally all four settled in the branches of a dead pine where they were fed by the adults who were still on the hunt.

Finally, and not least, a group of a half a dozen White-breasted Nuthatches came working its way through the woods and down to the pond where they were seen by Lorna. Again, there has been a regular sighting of one or two of these birds this spring but this was almost certainly a family group of fledglings and adults -- perhaps the first record of breeding nuthatches on the property since I have been paying attention.

Eric Salzman