They’ve Flown the Coop!
pamelamyers | June 29, 2017
I mentioned in a past post that Sam has been watching the nest full of bird eggs in my neighbor’s potted plant. It has been quite a saga, I’ll tell you that much. Well, first, the eggs obviously hatched. We caught a glimpse of the baby birds.
How cute are those little feathered friends? We watched them almost every day to see how they were doing. Mama and Papa bird weren’t thrilled, but they let us peek.
Well, the saga begins here. We had the cats outside and while I was out front with Penny, I noticed something fuzzy looking on the edge of his porch right by the step. I eventually brought Penny in and went over to look and saw that it was a baby bird! The bird had a lot more feathers (they were growing quickly) and he or she was just sitting there. It didn’t look hurt, but it wasn’t flying away either. I think it tried to fly and couldn’t quite do it, and wasn’t strong enough to fly back to the nest. I got Mark and he put it back into the nest. We did let Sam see how big they had gotten. There were only two birds left in the nest (including the escapee) so I think the other did get big enough to fly away.
The saga continues in that my neighbor was getting a new roof. The potted plant was hanging off of my neighbor’s porch, so….it had to move. We kept hoping the birds would fly away before the roofers came, but they didn’t. We wanted to move the plant, but were afraid that the mom wouldn’t know where it was. My crazy neighbor and I (yes, we are both insane), slowly moved the pot farther and farther away from the house by hanging it on a shepherd’s hook we migrated little by little. Mama and Papa bird always found them.
Every morning and evening Sam and I would check on the babies. Finally, just the other day, they flew away! The nest was empty. So, all’s well that ends well. I did figure out from looking in a bird book that they are house finches and these particular birds tend to like to nest in hanging flower baskets. Go figure. It was super fun watching them while they were there, and I think it is a good lesson for Sam in seeing things in nature, watching the mom bird feed them and hover over them, and seeing how they grew up and flew away. Every year my neighbor hangs those pots, and every year they wither and die because he stops watering them for fear of drowning the birds, so I’m sure we’ll see more babies next year. I hope so!