We Have Birds!

Spring break just ended here in the Northeast, three days ago, I was working in the living room and noticed three small girls outside the corner window.

They seemed determined to bend the tall bush/small tree in half until it broke, so I wandered outside, and asked what they were up to.  "We think there's a bird's nest in here!  A bird keeps flying out, and we've been watching it."

The tree is basically a tall bush with three trunks, all of which are covered in flat needles from just above ground level to the top.  I pulled down one of the trunks from the top and bent it down, revealing a beautiful little nest about 6 feet up.

The girls and I made a deal, that they would only check it once a day, and I would take pictures and leave them for them to see so we didn't scare the birds away. I held the branch aside, and the girls took turns holding each other up so that they could see the 5 little blue eggs inside.  They were excited, but worried that the mother bird wouldn't return.

Yesterday, I took my camera outside, set the delay, and raised it up above my head to take the picture above.  Imagine my surprise when I looked at the screen and saw a cute little baby bird begging for food. The girls were delighted to see the baby, and I almost expected them to run to the next and half destroy it to it.  But, they impressed me immeasurably.  They stuck to their one-peek-a-day rule, and just looked at it  once.

In the meantime, I'm not sure what kind of bird they are, because the mother flies far away whenever I try to take a picture of her, but soon I'll be able to get one and find out.  In the meantime, we have three bird feeders, which I keep full.  One is a finch feeder, one is a suet block in the front yard, and the third is my favorite, a small platform feeder in a small tree that looks like a manger.  I hope to keep them around and happy.