Birds' Nest

So when we went to California the last week of March, some birds decided the wreath on our front door was a nice quiet place to nest. They're much smaller than your average robin, but the eggs are light blue, so who knows. Anyway, here's a photo bird diary. Of course, we didn't touch the nest at all and I only used the flash once (by accident). And we only took photos when the mother was gone.

You can see the birds used part of a band-aid and part of our shredded trampoline cover. Eliza thought this was so cool, and Micah was mad that the bird "stole" from our trampoline (even though the whole thing shredded last summer).


If you click on it, you can see the father bird standing guard.


About a week after we got home, there were two eggs.


A few days later, there were five eggs.


I went away to BYU Women's Conference last weekend, and when I came back Friday, the five babies were born! They were so cute with their wobbly necks and fluffy covering.

The next day, Saturday, I peeked through the window onto the porch and one of the babies was lying on the doormat. I didn't anticipate teaching the kids about this part of nature yet, but they took it alright. I scooped it up with a tissue and it started moving! That was sad. It had obviously been injured on the fall, and the exotic animal hospital staff said to smash up bird food and feed it from a dropper with a little water. Still, it died a few hours later, and we buried it outside near where we buried our parakeet, Tiger.



So I think the birds decided it was too hectic on our front porch with people coming and going. We had a sign for people to use the back door, but it was small. And as you can imagine, Ashley loved the sign--he was always worried he'd be walking around in his underwear and someone would knock on the back glass door. So one by one, the parents have taken the babies away (hopefully to another nest) and there are none left. The last one left this morning. I hope they're okay. The kids had such a fun time watching the progress of everything and watching the parents feed the babies through the door window. It was a really neat experience. But I won't leave my wreath up after Christmas anymore; it's nice to have my front door back. Now I get to go clean up all the poop.