Cardinals

I can't tell you how happy I was when I saw a mama cardinal (affectionately named Lucy) making a nest in our bush. We watched her drag twigs into the bush - about eight feet off of the ground. She began sitting on her nest at the end of April, only ever leaving to visit the birdfeeder with Charlie (the red male). He would feed her beak-to-beak with sunflower seeds, and then she would happily chirp her way back into the bush.

This was the best shot I could get of her in the nest - can you spy her bright orange beak? :)

I climbed up on a ladder to take a peek at the speckled eggs! There were four! But if you look closely, one looks rather tiny - and that one never hatched.

The sweetest little babies - only a couple of days old!

At five days-old, there were two precious, slightly-feathered babies in the nest. No sign of what happened to the third! :(

Seven days-old, and my heart broke quite a bit to find only one baby left. We spotted the other baby to the right of the nest. There had been a late spring frost, and I wonder if that caused him to pass away. The boys named the last surviving baby, Woodstock "Woody". At this point, Woody began to chirp loudly enough when he was fed that we could hear him from the house with our window open. It was so cute!

At ten days-old, Woodstock had plenty of feathers, and fledged the nest shortly after this photo was taken! I couldn't snap a photo quickly enough, but he was opening his beak for me to feed him, and I melted.

I had the boys watercolor Lucy and Charlie, and their paintings turned out adorable! We took the nest down to get a close look at it. And we also opened up the last tiny egg - which only contained liquid and yolk, and now we're keeping it as a tiny souvenir in the nest.

We did not ever spot Woodstock again, but hopefully he/or she went on to a be a healthy juvenile bird. We do think that Charlie and Lucy began a second nest in another bush in our yard. Unfortunately, that bush is so tall that I can't get a look at it, so I don't know how that's going. We'll know if we hear babies next week! :)