Looking west at Broken Top and The Three Sisters in the Oregon Cascades Feb. 2016


“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” -
John Ruskin


Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Not the only eggs in a nest...


While our little finch nest may be without birds, we do still have baby birds to enjoy here.



Look closely at the bottom of the hole - there are three little English sparrow babies.  This nest is in a birdhouse on a post on our west deck.  They don't seem to mind us being around at all.



This birdhouse is attached to the east side of our house up high.  The swallows like it and have their little ones tucked away safely inside.

The swallows are very good neighbors.  Each time they bring a morsel to feed their little ones, they leave with whatever piece of trash from their nest that they can carry in their mouths.  Often it is a small piece of excrement that they carry away from the nest.  I believe they do this in hopes of keeping their location somewhat hidden from predators.

(The sparrows don't care - they are very messy neighbors. letting excrement pile up below their birdhouse - they are brazen and noisy, too.)




This is half of a swallow egg shell that I found some twenty feet away from the nest.


4 comments:

Sue said...

I'm glad you have some nests to watch. I love swallows---I had some raise a family right outside my garden. They kept an "eye" on me, but guess they realized I wasn't going to bother them. They do such a great job with the bugs.

ain't for city gals said...

swallows sound like my kind of bird..someone that picks ups after themself!...fun to watch babies grow up...hope you get to see them fly for the first time...xo

Sandy said...

What a great shot of the three peeking through the hole!

Powell River Books said...

I get to go back to the cabin next week. We had some swallows hanging around our birdhouse. I hope some finally settled in. I've seen them cleaning as well. - Margy