Dear Bird Lovers,
We had a lovely family of swallows using our bluebird house, which is in our new vegetable garden. We have been watching them for a month and for the past two days they have provided our major source of entertainment. Yes, I know, we should get a life!
We think they had five eggs, but it was hard to tell since they were all atop one another and we didn’t want to damage the fragile shells. We watched as the parents would take turns sitting on the eggs. One would sit with her/his beak sticking out to receive food from the other. Then all of a sudden both parents were making lots of runs to feed the new hatchlings as they started to break out of their shells. We think it was about twelve days from the time they hatched until the time they fledged. We only saw four of them fledge, but we might have missed one since it two full days for them to get the message that mom and dad were ready for the empty nest. The one we called Otto was very large and therefore the first to fledge. Once they were ready to leave the nest they would hop out of the box and jump/fly to the roof. There they would preen and test their wings and wait for mom or dad to feed them one or two more times. After about thirty minutes they would just leap into the sky to be met by a parent with some food and then they would fly away. About twenty minutes after all the birds were gone, Cindy and I opened the box with the intention of cleaning it for the next birds. Almost as soon as we did that, mom, dad and the five young ones came from nowhere and started to dive-bomb us. We quickly closed the box but they didn’t enter or return; I guess they were just homesick for a little bit.
Last night during cocktail hour we noticed that there were a couple of Carolina Wrens taking bits of the old nest that we removed and rebuilding their own little love nest in the box. I tell you, this box is prime real estate.
http://gallery.me.com/wbyxbee#100544
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