The rain held off so that we could visit our boxes. Our feet got wet but it was worth it!
Box One Nothing, again. We went over to box 2 to see what was happening! Exciting! | Box Two They are here!!! So far, we think all the birds have hatched. We have nestlings. We are not sure if they all have hatched since all the nestlings are on top of each other. One of our young ornithologists came up to visit the box on the weekend and he thinks he saw five young. No cowbirds have been spotted and no parent activity today. The babies look about a week old (They are called nestlings after a few days in the nest.) We hope for the nestlings to have a healthy life. We noticed black fuzz on parts of their bodies. |
Box 3
We didn't check because of the wasp's nest. We really aren't sure what to do about it. We noticed an adult male flying into the box so now we are really wanting to see in there.
Box 4
Spirit, Wind, Scruffy and Blue hatched! They are now hatchlings (just born). Neptune hasn't hatched though. Wind looked very hungry because his mouth was open the minute we opened the box door. The mother and father were hanging around the nest, on branches. They probably want to keep those babies warm or feed them (Wind really was hungry). They look very different from the box 2 birds. These guys don't have any feathers or black fuzz but we did see something black and fuzzy by Neptune (the egg). We aren't sure what that is.
Box 5
Still nothing. Although when we closed the box, we heard a buzzing. We hope it doesn't turn out to be like box 3 with a wasp's nest.
Teacher's Note
It was wonderful to see the comparisons the ornithologist made between the hatchilings and nestlings. There were a lot of good predictions on when they were born. The consensus was that Box 2 was born about 6 days ago and that Box 4 was born yesterday. I would guess they aren't too far off;)