Birdsburg

Four years ago we decided to build a city. Not an ordinary city, but a city for birds – Birdsburg. So said so done. Kids and I started to invent and design bird houses. A month later, on the facade of our country house, first an airport appeared, then a hotel, then some multi-storey buildings and private houses. Just like humans have.
We wiped the sweat off the foreheads and sat comfortably on the terrace to watch the birds populate their new homes.
A day passed, but the birds did not pay attention to the new microdistrict, then a week passed, then a month. Birds flew around, but not one was going to settle in Birdsburg. Children lost interest in the art object, but I still believed in a miracle.
— It’s probably too expensive for them? I thought and hung a sign saying that housing is for free. But it didn’t help.
— Maybe we should feed them? Vica and I gave them seeds. But they ignored us.
— Maybe we should wait for spring? And we began to wait.
But no one settled in the houses next spring, neither next summer or autumn. Well, except for flies and tree bugs. I stopped waiting and took up other things. Another year passed. And then one day, in the spring, I noticed that a bird flew into a birdhouse. With curiosity, I began to observe. A month later, someone began to squeak there. We got nestlings! So it was not in vain that we waited so long. The next year, several houses were already populated – probably the first starling told his friends about comfortable, non-mortgage housing. And now, four years later, Birdsburg lives a full life – all the houses are populated, nestlings appeared in each of them, and our plot of land is full of contented chirping of the birds which, we hope, keep thanking us in their bird language.
But it’s not for sure.
What’s for sure is that you shouldn’t walk under such cities. I could feel it first-hand.