By Heather O.
Some days, I feel like I’m living in a nature show.
We’ve discovered a family of rabbits living under our bush, and keep seeing baby bunnies darting about. Some squirrels apparently planted some acorns in our hibiscus plant, which caused small oak trees to sprout in my container box this spring. And on Saturday, we found this:
The second picture is to give you some perspective (and no, that’s not some funky nailpolish I’m wearing–it’s pink paint from the baby’s room. Yes, pink. And how I feel about having a pink room is another post entirely.)
We found this tiny, beautiful, perfect nest inside our hanging plant on our porch. I checked on it yesterday, and there has actually been a fourth egg added. I will pause now for a collective, “Ahhh, how sweet!”
I haven’t seen the mother bird, though, and I keep wondering if we are going to have a version of “Are you my mother?” played out right on our front porch. Aren’t they supposed to sit on their eggs, or protect them, or something like that? I mean, I expect to be dive bombed from some angry mommy sparrow every time I go out the door, but alas, no such luck.
So, since I don’t see a mother around, and I am bursting to the brim with hormonal motherly instinctual goodness, of course I feel sort of responsible for these little guys. Or girls. Or, um, whatever you call baby birds. I wonder if they are warm enough. If the rain will damage the nest. If I watered the plant too vigorously before I realized there was a nest there. And what happens if they can’t peck their way out of the shell? Is there such a thing as C-sections for baby birds?
And I just can’t help but marvel at nature and the beauty of spring and the gift of life. I know there is some profound analogy to be made about my pregnancy and the parallelism of the cycle of life, and um, something being renewed and, you know, like manifested in the perfectness of these eggs, but that kind of stuff is a little bit beyond my brain at the moment. It’s a little bit occupied building some lungs, I think. Feel free to draw your own analogy, though.
For right now, I’ll just smile and enjoy the nest while I ponder one important question…
Who do you think will pop first–me, or the eggs?
A lot of birds don’t start incubating until the whole clutch is laid. That way, the chicks don’t start to really develop for a bit, and then they all hatch within a day or so of each other. Otherwise, there would be large spaces of time between the chicks hatching and the younger ones would die because their older, bigger siblings would get all the food. That happens often anyway, but this way, it’s minimized at leat a bit.
Comment #1 by FirebyrdMay 28th, 2007 at 2:30 pmLooks a lot like the little hummingbird nest we get each spring. The mothers are fast to dart when someone gets close, but hover somewhere near. They are so little and fast that you might not notice her. One possibility at least.
Comment #2 by AbbeyMay 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pmI think you’ve got a changeling in your nest. Two of the eggs are tiny and blue and one is bigger, brown and speckled. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about it; one kind of “parasite” bird will actually watch and if their egg is removed from the nest they’ll return and smash the others.
I don’t mean to spoil your fun. It is awesome to have a nest you can watch. We’ve been living in a smaller city this month while my husband does an internship and he’s constantly thrilled to see geese, ducks, rabbits, gophers and such around our building.
Comment #3 by Proud Daughter of EveMay 28th, 2007 at 5:39 pmPDOE-
The two smaller ones are actually white (sorry, the picture isn’t great), and the fourth egg I found yesterday is brown and speckled, too. So we have 2 and 2. I know so little about birds, I just figured it was normal. Does this mean we will have two birds fighting it out for the nest, and babies devouring each other?
So much for sweet little birdies….
Comment #4 by Heather O.May 28th, 2007 at 5:58 pmOk, I just looked it up. The white eggs are grasshopper sparrow eggs. The brown speckled eggs are cowbird eggs, which are parasitic birds. They leave their eggs in other birds’ nests, and abandon the eggs to be raised and fed by other birds. But if the babies are bigger than the ones of the nest they landed in, they invariably dominate the other babies, and the smaller ones die.
Wow, maybe being part of a nature show isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, huh?
Thanks for the tip, PDOE.
Comment #5 by Heather O.May 28th, 2007 at 6:17 pmHeather, my mom had the same thing happen in her hanging basket last year. She was just extra careful when she watered and everything came out fine. Though they did make a mess on her deck. Oh and my two kids had a ball checking on the nest everyday.
Comment #6 by moddyMay 28th, 2007 at 8:25 pmMy wife and I watched with curiosity and enchantment as a mother bird built a nest in a fake flower box outside our second story apartment window. Four little birds hatched out, and we peeked at them carefully so as to not frighten the mother away. We thought the little baby birds were quite precious. In a few short days, they had grown considerably. They seemed healthy and were soon ready to leave on their own. We missed their departure, though, as we went out of town for a week on vacation. Several days after we returned, we both noticed we were unusually itchy all over. We couldn’t figure out why until at 3:00 am we both realized we couldn’t sleep because of the constant creeping feeling we had, like something was climbing all over us. To our fright, we discovered there were new and very small spots and patches on our walls, door frames, and window sill. Very close inspection revealed that the birds had left us some unwanted guests, we were infected with mites! They were too small to see on our skin without magnification, but we could feel them. Afraid they were the parasitic - human targeting variety, we went OCD, cleaning every millimeter of our walls and apartment (and I really mean that) with various mite-killers and surface cleaners, sanitized our carpet and fabrics, and subjected our skin to whatever it took to wash the bugs away. Luckily, they were the bird-targeting kind of mites, and were on us merely by contact with the rest of the apartment. They never returned, but now we have to think twice whenever our skin is dry or we see any enchanting little birds nests. So be warned.
Comment #7 by AaronMay 29th, 2007 at 3:15 amOh, I have to share our bird story. We had a robin build her nest and lay 4 eggs on the underside of our 2nd story deck. So everyday, the kids would go peek through the slats of the deck to check on the eggs. Finally, one morning the eggs hatched. The kids all got to see the little birdies still with wet feathers, mouths agape. Then we left to run some errands. When we came home, the nest was gone. Totally gone. Not a hint that it was ever there at all — Except the poor mommy bird sitting on the ground calling for her babies. It was the saddest thing ever.
Comment #8 by Sherrie TMay 29th, 2007 at 9:24 amHere’s to a happier ending for your birdies.
Ugh, Aaron, we had the same thing happen once. In our bedroom in our apartment was a strange, boarded over area-all I can figure is that it was where an old AC unit went. Some birds started nesting in the outside portion, and sure enough, in came mites. We had to seal all around the board and fumigate our bedroom (and somehow do it without exposing my own birds to the fumes) and wash all my stuffed animals. Not a fun experience at all.
Comment #9 by FirebyrdMay 29th, 2007 at 1:23 pmWow, and I thought it was just a cute little birdie nest! Who knew!~
Do dish on how you feel about pink, H, I’m sure I was in the same boat. The truth is, they look delightful and lovely in pink, whether we like it or not!
Comment #10 by Tracy MMay 29th, 2007 at 5:10 pmSo now you’ve got me all worried because we think we have birds in our chimney. Every once in a while we hear chirping and then a pounding (almost like a woodpecker it’s so fast and hard!) inside our chimney like a bird’s got a nest in there that he returns to every few days. If that’s true, are we going to get mites, too? Help!
Comment #11 by StarababaMay 29th, 2007 at 5:13 pmOh, it’s not so bad. We have a nest in our hanging strawberry plant. The eggs hatched on Mother’s Day and the four babies flew away just this morning. It was very sweet to watch. Both parents had to coax the babies out one at a time and the last one hung out for four hours on the nearby bird feeder before braving it out into the big bad world. It was fun to have them and the kids and I already miss them!
Comment #12 by JCasa2May 29th, 2007 at 6:18 pmSo, will we be infested with mites, or what?
Now I’m officially totally freaked out.
Ah, Tracy, the pink. Only half of the room is pink, but it only took me a few tries to get it right, and make it not look like a Pepto Bismol bottle exploded. I’ve tempered it with brown, cream, and light blue accents with a Classic Pooh theme. I’m okay about it–I think. I just look at J’s room, which is done in bold primary colors, and I can’t help but think that maybe my little girl is getting a raw deal, having a room decked with pastels while her brother has a rockin’ room with bright reds, yellows, and blues. I know which room I would have been in as a kid.
Still, the pink is kinda soothing, (it’s VERY, VERY LIGHT), so maybe it will work after all.
And DH has told me in no uncertain terms that he is NOT painting that room again.
Wuss.
Comment #13 by Heather O.May 29th, 2007 at 9:39 pmIn our new house, H, they had a little girl too, and Abby’s room is already light pink- very, very light. I get you on the Pepto thing- ugh!
By the way, I’m going with “you” first in the race with the birds hatching.
Comment #14 by Tracy MMay 29th, 2007 at 11:03 pmUnfortunately for the baby birds, they have a rather high mortality rate. I guess you can watch all about it on the discovery channel though, as well as your yard (though the TV will have commentary, your yard will just be commented on by your neighbors and people who come to visit).
Just to freak you out some about the mites, check them out:
Comment #15 by AaronMay 29th, 2007 at 11:07 pmhttp://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/birdmite.html
When I was a little boy, my aunt killed some insects I had been observing. In response to the look of shock on my innocent little face (at seeing my aunt dispose of living creatures), she told me, “God wanted them dead.”
Starababa, If you think you have a animal of ANY kind in your chimney, call a chimney sweep (Yes, they do exist.) and have your chimney cleaned ASAP. If something dies in your chimney, you will end up fighting flies - and you don’t want that. Our family didn’t enjoy that experience at all!
Comment #16 by MichelleMay 29th, 2007 at 11:22 pmJust tonite we saw a momma bird with a worm fly up to the nest in our tree and then heard the high-pitched and intense chirping of the babies we couldn’t see. So awesome.
Aaron, you remind me of the time we had CO collecting in our basement and couldn’t figure out why until we found a nest in the vent pipe from our furnace. You also remind me of the woodpecker that woke us up at our cabin early one morning as he/she pecked inside the metal pipe that was our chimney. Yes, hire a chimney sweep, I saw.
I never knew about parasitic birds. Wow. Thanks for the Discover-Channel-like discovery.
Comment #17 by m&mMay 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm