In Spanish, dolores means “pains”.
When we moved into our current rental home, there was an active house finch nest in the sconce on one of our balconies. Every time we opened the door, the chicks would freak out, the parents would avoid coming to the nest. It was a pain! We didn’t want to have the chicks die, but we wanted to use our balcony. We waited until the chicks fledged and we took the nest out of the light fixture.
Fast forward to this spring. About 4-6 weeks ago a couple of house finches started trying to build a nest in the light fixture AGAIN. For all I know it is either Mama or one of the babies from last year. We did what we could to discourage the nest, but the birds prevailed.
As we saw the female sitting on the nest, we commented what a pain it was going to be, AGAIN. So we named her Dolores.
We have been watching, talking to, and checking on Dolores since she got her nest pulled together. She spent a good deal of time (as pictured above) just sitting, with her head peeking out above the top of the sconce. It seems that her time on the nest was well spent. I went to check on her today because I hadn’t seen her the last couple of times I went out onto the balcony, and GUESS WHAT….????
I’ll be following their progress until they fledge. How exciting!!