Nest in Yucca

But the cardinals have now abandoned it . . .

Cardinal Mother

The mother cardinal from the recent cardinal posting. Her head is so pretty!

Junior Cardinal Scout

I am simply unable to edit myself or show any restraint with certain subjects!

Cardinal, Male, Singing

From Saturday. This cardinal dad has been singing, singing, singing lately; there must be new eggs or babies somewhere.

Junior Cardinals

At least three of our cardinal babies have made it. There are two (one male, one female) that are old enough to have colored beaks now, and one that is still brown all over and hanging with mum and dad. The little male is the most curious transitioning-to-adulthood bird that I've ever seen.




Hugh just wondered if he is a mutant; his little head looks so VERY odd in this photo.

Cardinal With a Mohawk

This year's second batch of cardinals left the nest today! Hugh and I left the house unusually early so were not around to see, but the nest was empty when I got home, and so far I have spotted one of the three. This one is sitting in the butterfly bush that is next to the jasmine where the nest is. Part of the reason I am sometimes a rotten photographer is that I don't want to scare my subjects. I really need a new, better lens so I can get closer from farther away...

The Cardlets Fledge and Danger Looms in the Guise of Scrub Jays!

The three little cardinals left the nest Saturday morning to go out into the big new world. I awoke to a huge squawking and flapping out back which turned out to be the parent cardinals and a couple of scrub jays going at it, but I didn't realize until later, when I saw the empty nest, what was going on, and there was more of the same later.


They are so small! I was surprised that they are big enough to fledge. They were 10 or 11 days old, but looked so wee in the nest (and still do out in the open, actually). So anyway, later, after the scene I'd witnessed earlier, the parents were hopping around in the trees out back, making their encouraging chip-chip noises, and the little birds were gamely doing their learning-to-fly thing. I hid in the outdoor shower for a while to get these photos and then after I went inside, the scrub jays came back. They swooped at the trees where the babies were, and the parent cardinals swooped back at them, and it was really sort of horrifying in a bird-world sort of way. The jays were quite vicious and relentless in their attacks.


The mother bird with one of the young (I know it's a crappy photo; I don't care)


The parents watching vigilantly


So scrawny and sweet!


Taking a chance that the wings will work


After a bit, the fight began to center itself on the ground below one of the trees. I went out again to have a closer look and saw this:


Poor thing, I thought, its eyes weren't even open yet, which doesn't make sense with the fact that it made it out of the nest to this spot, but whatever. Its eyes were open, but it was clearly very frightened, and the jays were getting closer. I stuck around, figuring that I would scare the jays but the parent birds wouldn't leave the baby no matter what, and it worked. The jays left and the parent birds got the baby to come out from under the tree and they all went off to a tree in the meadow, where they are presumably today living happily ever after. We hope, we hope.




The angry dad—fightin' mad!

Nestlings

Dad with a mouthful of yummy goodness for the babes.
A grasshopper, perhaps?



As mentioned before, there are three nests quite nearby of which we are aware, and I am sure that there are dozens more all about us that we haven't discovered yet. There are the little wrens in the skull on the porch; the woodlets (offspring of our golden-fronted woodpeckers); and the little cardinals in the jasmine outside the kitchen window. The wrens and the woodlets have been hatched for over a week—I don't know the exact dates, but I first heard both sets of young on May 1st.

The cardinal eggs hatched just a few days ago, sometime between Wednesday and Thursday mornings (the 7th and 8th of May), and we are fascinated by the teeny tiny birds and their parents, who are feeding them nonstop and looking out for them in other ways, such as coming to sit on them when it rains. Hugh is begging and pleading with me to take photos; I tell him I will do it only if I can manage to do so without alarming them. I was going to try this morning but it's very overcast, and they're deep in the jasmine, through a dirty window and a screen, and I don't think there will be enough light. Maybe I'll try anyway, or try tomorrow.

Other younguns are starting to appear. I have seen 2 scrub jay babies at the feeders, and I think that the Scott's Oriole couple have a young one with them suddenly, too.

He is watching me and thinking, perhaps, that he'll peck my eyes out if I get any closer to that nest.