The bird has left the nest

For the previous two weekends, as we ate breakfast and then a late lunch on our front patio, Jen and I have been enchanted by the growth of a baby bird. We're not sure what kind of bird, but they're a brilliant yellow and black, with a little white. They built a nest on the bottom of a palm frond (attached I do not know how) that we can see when we lean back and look up. It's almost a bag nest, with the hole near the top, all very light-colored straw -- they must have been quite picky when gathering materials. At any rate, for the previous two weeks the mother and father have been incredibly busy feeding the young one, who would stick its head out when neither was around -- not more than a couple of minutes at a time. We've seen the baby get progressively bigger and noisier.

And then this weekend, there was no frantic back-and-forth and no baby in the nest. We did not find, as we sometimes do around this time of year, a baby bird corpse on the ground, so I have to presume that the little bird tested its wings and found them sufficient to facilitate flying. We still see flashes of yellow and black flitting through our oleanders, and I like to think these are our leaning-back acquaintances. It has been fun to observe this little drama in the circle of life.