A pair of song sparrows built a nest in our old Christmas tree (which is in a brush pile to be burned at a later date) this spring. The eggs hatched sometime last week and I managed to get pictures of the babies on Monday of this week:
I went to check on them today and almost got a picture of mom on the nest feeding them, but she got scared and hopped back into the brush pile when I pulled the camera out. I want a telephoto lense for my camera someday! Anyway, I did get another picture of the babies so you can see how much they have grown in less then a week (and even managed to remember to turn on my macro setting this time...check out those pinfeathers!):
The needles in the tree are drying out fast now that the weather is getting hot (as you can see in the pictures), so the poor things have lost all their shade as the needles have fallen off. After I took this picture I covered them with some branches from a grape vine and they were much cooler.
One more nest...yay!!!Oh neat! Look what I just found this evening:
Another song sparrow nest! It was getting dark, so the eggs are a bit out of focus, but I wanted to get a picture before they hatched. Song sparrows often nest on the ground (as this one did), so I always keep the upper part of the yard in it's "natural" state (i.e. I don't mow it) and I hike around frequently looking for nests. When I do find one I mark it so no one accidentally steps on it. I also keep the grass around the creek high in case a duck or Canadian goose decides to nest there. Being in the country, we can keep our grass however we want!
No comments:
Post a Comment