OAK BAY -- They didn’t ring the bell, but they made themselves welcome at Chris’ front door.
“There was debris on the ground,” Chris discovered after not opening the door for a while because of the pandemic. “And all of a sudden I turned around and there was debris on my wreath.”
Debris that — Chris quickly realized — was actually a pair of birds’ building materials.
“I was so honoured that these birds chose our house to make a home on,” she smiles.
A home on a wreath for a couple they named Purdy and Pedro. A home that — despite limited square footage — was filled with boundless possibilities.
“It was amazing!” Chris says, after discovering four eggs in the nest.
And a few days later they hatched a quartet of bald babies.
“Its been great just watching life go on!”
Despite the pandemic causing so much to stop happening, it didn’t take long for Purdy and Pedro’s babies to start transforming.
“Just how quickly they changed was mind-blowing!” says Chris.
Chris’s kids named the birds Enzo Junior, Charlie Junior, Musty Junior and Buddy Junior. Thanks to mom and dad’s constant feeding, the juniors turned into — what Chris calls — “little fluffer-nutters.”
“They have what looked like big eyes,” she says. “And a mohawk of fuzzy feathers.”
Their heads would pop out of the nest in unison when one of their parents would arrive with food. The fluffer-nutters would eat like a synchronized swim routine before falling back to sleep with the same precision.
Pedro proved to be just as efficient at — shall we say — changing the juniors’ diapers.
“One of the babies was pooping,” Chris explains. “The dad caught it [in his beak] and took off with it.”
All of these moments were captured on camera and livestreamed on the Uplands Park Bird Nest Cam Facebook page. Chris says Purdy, Pedro, and the Juniors were watched by more than 21,000 people around the world, from India to Egypt to Argentina to Australia and beyond.
“I think it just reminds us that we’re going to get through this,” Chris says.
It reminds us that all things must, which can be comforting in the midst of a pandemic. But it’s also bittersweet when — before you know it — your little fluffer-nutters can fly away on their own.
“I have empty nest syndrome!” Chris says, after watching the footage of the last bird leave. “They were the best!”
All the juniors are gone now, which means their parents won’t return either.
But they’ve left a collection of debris — cemented by family — that will always be a reminder that even during the worst of times, the best memories can be made.
