Sunday June 8, 2025: A Small Moment of Delight

Birds!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1740:

My small moments of delight came this past week from birds. I assume because it is spring, with whole bunches of new baby birds on the scene, the birdfeeder has been particularly busy recently. In some cases, it has been the arrival of birds that are not usually present, like the black-headed grosbeak, perhaps eating to go back to feed birds on nests.

Other times the fence and the feeder itself are stages for baby birds, all fluffy, fluttering their wings rapidly while sticking their beaks out in clear supplication for food. Next to them will be a mother or father (who that actually look smaller because not as fluffy) feeding them! I’ve seen mostly baby house finches strike this pose.

There have also been more than usual thumps as birds hit the front or side windows. So far, no bird seems to be hurt, and I assume what we are witnessing is I hope the babies learning an important lesson.

A humming bird has even started coming to the olive tree outside the window where I often sit when talking on the phone. Several years ago, I had a humming bird who came to sit on branch outside the window every time I appeared, so I hope this is the beginning (or resuming?) of another beautiful friendship.

In addition, this week I’ve been enjoying the daily reports on the two young female eagles, Sunny and Gizmo, and their parents, Jackie and Shadow. Both sisters have fledged this week—ie left the nest. First Sunny, and yesterday, Gizmo. Commentators are doing a lot of anthropomorphizing that Gizmo was lonely for the couple of days Sunny left (although Sunny did return several times to the nest, where the parents continue to deposit fish.) And it did seem significant that the two nights Gizmo was alone in the nest at night, one of the parents joined her, even though for the that for several weeks the parents had not spent the night in the nest. Evidently one of the parents also spent last night above Gizmo in the tree the young one was sitting in. I suspect there will be much coming and going today and the youngsters practice taking off, flying, and landing. Gizmo’s first trip appears to have happened when she tried to hover, but missed her footing and sort of fell into the air…but then took off and made it to a nearby tree.

I confess I was as invested in the success of these two as anyone. And kept announcing to my husband each time some more information came in about their antics—as I had been doing each time I saw a baby at our feeder. Definitely lots of moments of delight!

Are any of you getting to witness any baby birds of any kind?

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