What is it about baby birds?

Maybe it is from years of raising little chicks on the porch and being attuned to distress cheeps, so if their light bulb burned out or something I could rescue them from chilly death. Whatever causes it, I cannot let the imperative cries of baby birds float over my head among the background noise like I do the trains and the cars on the Interstate. I have to at least go look.

Thus at this time of year I spend half my time peeking out the window, or peering nearsightedly up or down or somewhere else to see who is doing all the cheeping and peeping. The wrens are still at home in the front porch pillar, but I am kind of used to them. Still I check on them every now and then and enjoy the parents' all day chorus. Both male and female downy woodpecker come in to the suet feeder dozens of times a day, trying to teach those pesky chicks to pick their own suet. The male has no patience at all and is a very noisy fellow when feeding. He reminds me of a dad cheering his sons at a Tee-ball game. The mother is just tired.

Then there are the chipping sparrows. I nearly stepped on a tiny, half-fledged baby the other day, right under the clothesline. It fluttered away peeping that all too familiar distress call, but very musically. Now its parents spend the whole day racing back and forth along the clothesline chirping at their hidden children. They even perch on it among the clothes pins and fit right in, being much of a size and color to match, although the clothespins don't have brilliant russet head caps. I have chased them (birds, not clothespins) around with the camera several times, but to no avail. They are just too quick for me. (I can however, catch up with the clothespins and do quite often. This is nice weather for drying things outdoors.)

A young blue jay of teen aged persuasion has been seen going in and out of the eaves of the heifer barn. They are not normally building birds and he is rather striking darting in and out of the dark holes. I think he is taking Sassenach and starling eggs to eat, and more power to him.
The killdeers from DG's yard have flown the coop. They sail around and around the yard like a precision air drill, screaming their signature call. I defy anyone to NOT look up when they pass on sickled wings.

There are many others.... baby birds are everywhere and so are hungry predators trying to eat them. The field below the sitting porch is a constant swirling drama as jays and crows and grackles battle Eastern kingbirds and sundry smaller, quieter fliers, for the lives of their offspring. I take a book with me when ever I go out there to sit, but I never get any reading done because I end up watching them.