Baby Birds

About 3 weeks ago Mike noticed something funny about the bbq. A bunch of weeds and twigs were coming out of it:

So he opened it up and this is what he saw!

About a week later I peeked inside the grill, and lo and behold they hatched!

They were sooooo cute! They were no more than a day old in this picture.

I like their little mouths open in this one.

You might be wondering how the momma bird gets inside. There's a gap in the back that she gets through to feed them.

I was really surprised how fast they grow. This is them at probably 6 days old.

Hungry little things. :)

I've really enjoyed these baby birds. It almost feels like we have a pet. The barbecue is right outside the kitchen door to the deck and the sound of their chirping carries into the house all day long. I always know when the momma bird is feeding them because their cries get REALLY loud for about 30 seconds as they get all excited and start begging for their food. I hear it continuously throughout the day and its fun to hear. The momma bird is funny to watch too. If we are hanging out on the back porch she sits in a tree close by (usually with her mouth full of bugs) just squawking at us in a concerned way. If we stay long enough she'll eventually get brave and fly into the bbq even with us only a few feet away. I see her on the back lawn constantly pecking her little beak into the ground digging for their food. She must be exhausted by the end of the day feeding 6 hungry babies all day long. Even one baby is hard for me.

Unfortunately this is where the story takes a sad turn. The momma bird wasn't very smart when choosing her location to lay her eggs. We started to realize that it would be difficult for the baby birds to get out when it was time to fly away and leave the nest. We also realized with the bbq in the sun it was probably getting pretty hot inside.

A few days later I noticed their noise had diminished and I wondered if some had died as a result of a couple of warm days. I was nervous to open the bbq again though, because the last time we had done it (the above picture) they were pretty mobile and I was afraid one might fall out with the lid open. But after 3 weeks we knew they must be getting closer to leaving the nest, so we had to check.

Last night, for the first time in a week, Mike went outside and checked on them. He found that four of the six had died. We think it must've been the heat. The remaining two are not ready to fly yet, but we decided we had to prop open the lid to let heat escape and to allow them to get out. The problem with propping the lid is that the gap in the back (where the momma gets access) closes as the lid opens. By shutting off her access to the back we worried she might abandon her babies, thinking someone had tampered with the nest. But we knew if we didn't do it, the heat would kill the two remaining babies. It was do or die for these birds. We propped it open and hoped the next morning the momma bird would come back.

Well, this morning we woke up and sure enough, that momma bird was in there feeding her babies and she's been feeding them all day long. I'm so relieved!

I guess its a game of survival of the fittest for these birds and I hope these two make it.

Story to be continued....