Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Yellow Warblers

A pair of yellow warblers decided that our scrawny thunder-child flowering crab would be a fine place to build their nest.  Sitting in our living room one windy rainy evening, I was amazed that a yellow bird, goldfinch, I though, was actually starting to build a nest in the tree as I was looking on.  Back and forth it flew, from a large evergreen back to this tree, collecting spider web and grass and industriously working at making the stuff stay together on little more than a fork in the tree.  "Good luck", I thought.  After this evening, this wouldn't sound like such a good idea anymore.
Well, the bird did come back and pretty soon there was the neatest little nest in full eye-view from our window, if you happened to know it was there.  It has been quite interesting watching the progression, from a shy squirmish bird to not noticing us there at all, from eggs to these hatchlings cooling off in the heat.
These birds grew amazingly fast, from feathery down to soft feathers in like three days.  Soon the nest spilled over with these tiny birds, and they are tiny, about a quarter sized now and managing to fly a few feet to a tree when we try to put them back in the nest after dropping out.
 On Sunday, a misty rainy day, they decided to move out!  The nest was just too small to hold the lot.
 We wouldn't have noticed them around if not for the fussy parents trying to ward us off with broken wing antics.

This little guy seems to like the ground.  We put him in the tree and there he was, back on the ground again.

These fledglings are the sweetest things, you can't help but want to hold them when you see them.  They are still around, hiding in the shrubs under the windows.  It will be nice to see them safely fly off on their own.