These Birds Hate Me

My next door neighbor has a bird nest in her tree.  The babies hatched and I became obsessed with capturing their little fuzzy bodies on 'film'.  

Unfortunately, the mommy bird did not have a photo shoot in mind when she built her nest.  As a matter of fact, she built a semi-photoproof nest.  It was in a spot that always seemed to have the sun at its back and my pictures almost never turned out.  This did not stop me from trying!  I stuck my camera up in the tree and tried to get the right angle with my hand and camera held high in the air.  The result was tons of pictures of branches and (if I was lucky) parts of the nest.  

Finally, a few days ago, I had my chance.  The babies were big enough that we could see them without much effort.  I did what I'd been doing for the past week -- I stuck my arm up into the tree and tried to take their picture.  Only, this time, instead of a picture of branches and instead of chirping babies, those little suckers FLEW AWAY!  Right then and there!  I was mortified!  What if I scared them and they flew away earlier than they were supposed to??  What was I thinking sticking my arm into their tree??  Oh me oh my!  

Well, two of the babies flew out and just kept on flying all over the place.  The third flew to the sidewalk and didn't move.  He didn't seem to know how to get off the ground.  We gave him some space and he hop/flew his way to my friend's front porch.  His mommy came to his rescue and they all flew away.  What a relief!  

It was a big day for the little tweet tweets.  Now they are happy little birdies flying around town like the big boys.  Oh, happy day.