CAROLINA WREN UPDATE, PLUS

Five days is a lot in the life of Carolina Wren nestlings and ours are REALLY growing!  It amazes me that they are so tolerant of noise and activity near the nest.  Yesterday I had the house AC being serviced, a consultant in on HVAC for the Studio that we are building and the carpenter running saws, hammer guns, etc.  (Of course, they are used to the carpenter, as he has been here their entire lives, with the generator running right next to the nest before we knew that the nest was occupied!

Anyway, there is a lot of bird activity around the nest this morning, and I would not be surprised to find that they fledge today!  Both mama and papa are near by and mama was sitting on the construction wood pile with a bug in her mouth, calling. "Hungry?  Of course you are!  Come and get it!"  When we looked in the nest this morning, the nestling that is clearly the oldest and strongest was sitting in the mouth of the hole and it has an eyebrow stripe!!! 

May 15 - This is NOT the parent bird - you can still see the yellow of the baby gape, but today there is an eyebrow stripe!

The picture below is from yesterday - there is a HUGE difference overnight!

May 14 - beakier and beginnings of eyebrow stripe

In the picture above, the beaks look more like beaks and less like gapes, but the yellow is still there.  The bottom right nestling is starting to get a bit of an eyebrow stripe, but it is not as defined as the top picture.  These two pictures above were taken just ONE DAY APART!

Going back one more day, the picture below was taken May 13 and feathers are starting to show under the chin.

May 13 - Starting to show some feathers among the down

Papa has been singing all around the area, from the dogwood, to the Studio roof top, to the piles of construction wood, to the porch railing near where I am sitting.

Papa watching over his territory

 
Elsewhere in the yard, a squirrel decided to sample the fruit I put out hoping to entice the Scarlet Tanager to return. 

I had a half a bag of peanuts get wet in the bird food can and many were moldy and  not edible.  Some were still OK, so I put them out for the squirrels.  Our fox decided to sample them.  Blake was on the porch - some foxer he is!  Didn't even notice 'cuz he was looking the other way.  I didn't tell him...

And the flicker has been around a lot -- EAT THOSE ANTS!!!!!  Notice how hard it is to see him in the stones!  I never realized the camouflage effect that their feathers have!

Flicker eating ants, camouflaged in the stones.

 OK... back to work!