I'm an Auntie!
10 July 2002, 3:54 PM

I'm so tickled that I just have to share:

A couple of weeks ago a sparrow built a nest inside the wreath that's hanging on my front door. A few days later there were four little eggs in there. Just a little over two weeks after that one of the eggs hatched. :-)

Now there's four baby birds in there and they're getting bigger and less naked and fuzzy everyday. The mama bird is usually out hunting insects in the evening so that's when I can open my door and peek into the nest. They're so *cute*! (I'd include a picture, but so far they've only come out as grey blobs. I really need a proper lens to get good pics of them.)

When mama bird was building the nest I startled her a couple of times by opening the door. She'd fly to a nearby branch, leaves still in her beak, all a twitter. Papa bird would then present himself and try and scare me off by hissing at me. Since then I've been giving them a little peace and privacy by using my back door instead. And now, of course, my front door is a nursery.

I haven't seen Papa bird in a while, but I see Mama bird frequently. While she was sitting on the eggs I could carefully open the front door and she'd poke just her head out of the nest and look straight at me from about a foot away. I'd just carefully close the door again. Heh.

The baby birds will be 14 days old this Friday, and anywhere from 13 to 17 days they start to fledge, so I expect they'll be gone very soon. I've already put some soft blankets under the nest so they won't crack their little heads on the concrete patio if they flop out of the nest on their first attempts at flight.

Remind me to tell you about the baby possum someday. :-)