So often bird’s nests are tucked away out of sight. You can hear the baby birds, but you can’t see them until they venture outside the nest. A few weeks ago, someone showed me a spot where three bird’s nests were built in a row on top of a ladder. I could hear that the nests were active. I was able to take a peek inside the nest without getting too close. I was surprised to see a newly-hatched baby robin (and siblings) inside.
Our yard seems to have transformed into a baby bird nursery. Nests in the front yard, nests in the backyard, nests on the side of the house…we’ve seen baby cardinals, baby mourning doves, baby grackles, baby house finches, baby house sparrows, baby robins, and baby song sparrows. A walk around the backyard produces a din of angry chirps and tweets from bird parents telling me to begone or risk being swooped at.
Baby robin soon after leaving the nest.
More food for baby sparrow. It’s funny how some of the baby birds seem much bigger than the parents.
Ma and Pa Robin were the most outspoken. While hatching their four blue eggs next to our front porch, they chirped a warning every time I stepped off the porch steps. Once the babies came, their behavior became more frenzied. They relentlessly chirped and fanned their tail at me as I walked by. If you got too close, you’d have a speeding robin flying toward your head. Fortunately, I have not had actual contact with an angry robin’s beak.
Baby grackle opens wide.
Another meal for baby grackle.
Now that most of the hatching has taken place, baby birds are fluttering about the yard trying out their wings and discovering the world. Adult birds are zipping to and fro watching over their young and bringing worms, butterflies, and other tasties for their nourishment. Two things have amazed me about the bird nursery: 1. Adult birds seem to be able to find food for their babies quite quickly, over and over again; and 2., Birds can chirp pretty loudly despite having a worm hanging out of their beak.
Pretty soon we should be able to walk around our yard without creating a cacophony of angry bird sounds. In the meantime, it’s been fun observing the babies, and their parents, in our backyard bird nursery this spring.
Baby cardinals have hatched in our backyard. It started several weeks ago when a cardinal pair were flitting around, building their nest in the weeping cherry tree. Although the tree is akin to a high traffic rest stop for a variety of birds, the intertwining, hanging branches created a nice, secluded nest nook for the cardinals.
Once the baby cardinals were born, the parents were on high alert feeding and taking care of the babies. Whenever someone walked in the vicinity of the weeping cherry tree, the cardinal warning alarm “chip, chip, chip” would deploy. Today, I set off what sounded like a four-alarm cardinal emergency. Both mom and dad cardinal began to angrily “chip” at me, even though I wasn’t anywhere near the tree with their nest. After a minute, I realized that one of the babies was out of the nest. It was clinging to a small branch on a tree behind the lawn chair where I was sitting. I quickly snapped a few photos before retreating back inside the house to silence the bird alarm.
Seeing the baby cardinal hatched out into the world reminded me of a hatching incident we had with praying mantises. A few years ago, my husband was trimming bushes to tidy up the yard before winter set in. As my son helped gather the cuttings, he noticed that egg cases from praying mantises were attached to some of the branches. He gathered almost a dozen egg cases and put them into a small, plastic critter keeper.
As winter ensued, the critter keeper was placed in the garage and forgotten about. It was found again by my son right before spring. He took it out of the garage and brought it inside to take a closer look. After having been exposed to freezing temperatures all winter, it looked like no life would ever spring forth from the egg cases. Instead of returning it to the garage, the critter keeper with the egg cases was inadvertently placed on the floor in the kitchen — next to the cast iron baseboard heater (i.e., incubator!). A few days later, I was putting away groceries and noticed movement on the kitchen wall. I ignored it until it caught my eye a second time. I walked over for a look and saw a teeny, tiny praying mantis on the wall. It took a few seconds, but slowly I became cognizant of the fact that there was movement EVERYWHERE.
Our well-used critter keeper served as an “incubator” for praying mantis egg cases.
There were almost a hundred baby praying mantises in our house — on the kitchen wall, on the floor, in the dining room, on the sliding glass doors. They kept hatching and crawling out of the critter keeper. As much as I enjoy observing nature, this did not make me happy. I “calmly” enlisted my son and husband to catch ALL the praying mantises and bring them outside along with the still-hatching egg cases. For days afterwards, we were finding stray praying mantises; a few had even found their way to the upstairs bedroom. In the future, my preference would be to witness babies hatching outdoors, like the cardinals, instead of in the house, like the praying mantises.
