It's not as if I go hunting song sparrow nests throughout our yard. But I seem to have found each of our resident pair's nurseries this year.

The newest eggs are secreted away amid the raspberry canes, which I think will be a safer location than round two in the tomatoes. Because I'm pretty sure that my tomato-leaf pruning opened up the former nest too much and allowed a cowbird to lay one or more parasite eggs, which is probably one I found a chick pushed out of the nest and another disappeared days later.

Here's hoping three's the charm for our sparrows and Mama Bird will have a more successful hatch this time around.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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