Jackie and Shadow continue taking dedicated care of their eggs…and lovingly building their beautiful relationship in the process.
Early Sunday morning, Jackie announced the dawn…which led to a long morning discussion with Shadow across the distance. They both had a lot to say. Shadow was apparently still in his roosting spot…and after that grand wake-up call, he came in early to give Jackie her morning break.
Even though it was over 2 hours before Jackie returned from her break, Shadow immediately argued loudly and clearly about the unfairness of his short turn. Jackie tried twerpling loudly in return. It created a beautiful duet, but did not stop Shadow’s complaints.
So, Jackie pretended there was something important going on outside the nest…and Shadow almost fell for it, but then quickly switched to ignoring Jackie’s presence.
Jackie’s next move was the always handy ‘staring at your toes’ technique…if Shadow could whistle, his disinterest showed that he would have been doing that by now. So, Jackie tried focusing on everything around the nest except Shadow…but, his ignoring continued.
Switching modes, Jackie pulled out Shadow’s moving sticks trick…but that got her nothing. And she even alternated stick moving with crying…but, that didn’t work either.
She had to get more serious. Jackie walked purposely around Shadow and stepped into the ol’ standby--the ‘bite the beak’ technique. That earned a little whimper from Shadow, but no movement. Determined to get Shadow up, Jackie moved on to the surveying the neighborhood method…and then back to “staring at your toes’…
…and finally, Jackie settled on just pure patience. She stood quietly for nearly 2 minutes, simply waiting with no action or insistence behind it.
That left Shadow with nothing to ignore. So, he finally got up and flew out the back door. Jackie’s expertise at diligent patience paid off. She won the eggs back.
On Shadow’s next nest-duty turn, he focused on getting the nest bowl in good order by organizing the recently delivered fluff. He was so effective at making sure he covered the whole nest bowl area that he covered his own back in fluff…and then simply continued making sure he stuffed it into all the little spaces around himself.
When Jackie returned this time, she tried one more twist on her techniques. She did twerpling again, but this time, very softly and sweetly…and that did it. Her tenderness won Shadow over and he quickly got up to give his beautiful Jackie her turn…we won’t count that he couldn’t resist complaining as he flew off the front porch.
As Jackie happily settled in on the eggs, she probably made a mental note of the complaint for their next early morning discussion.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any different news about a pip in the eggs for those holding out every chance of hope for a hatching (including me!). Thank you for joining me in enjoying Jackie and Shadow’s continuing saga of shenanigans in the meantime.
Sandy

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