Friday, June 10, 2011

Babies, babies, everywhere!

We live on a farm, so we don't have a whole lot of trees around the house. However, in the front yard, we have a large Maple and a big ole pine tree; we think the pine tree acts like some kind of birdie condo, with multiple nests at different levels. Right now, that tree is LOUD. We figure that, at the very least, we've got Grackles and House Sparrows, and possibly Starlings (yeah, I know, all pain-in-the-butt birds we could happily do without) all nesting in there.

And the babies have started to fledge.

Over the past few days, we've seen baby Starlings and Grackles following their parents around our yard, mouths wide open and demanding to be fed. We also have Robins nesting somewhere, but I'm not exactly sure where. Possibly in the barn. All I know is that our poor neighbour (we're in a semi-detached house) was traumatize when she ran a baby robin over with the lawnmower (I found the poor little body :( ).

I figure it's only a matter of time before the Eastern Bluebirds who are nesting in the box by our driveway start bringing their little ones around, and same for the Tree Swallows who have been play relay from the bird house in the backyard for the past several weeks. And the Barn Swallows will probably fledge soon, too, I would think.

I also hope that starting in July, we'll start seeing an increase in hummingbird activity. It's dropped off like crazy over the past week and a bit, which makes me very sad; we seem to have one male and one female left. I just hope the others come back. Last year, the mature males disappeared early in the summer, but the females would bring the young ones to our yard. It was like Grand Central Station for hummers during July and August, as the juveniles figured out their place in the world.

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