Hatched Birds

This is a follow up to my last post.

Yesterday I was out in the garage picking out some glass for my next project, and I heard some loud chirping sounds. I remembered the bird's nest right outside our front door and knew that the birds had hatched, and it sounded like more than one baby! I went inside the house to look at the calendar to see how long it had been since I had first noticed the nest, and it had been 3 weeks. I usually leave my house from the garage door and I'm also usually in my car so I don't notice the birds.

Quickly I picked up my camera and went out the front door to take a look at the nest. As usual, the mother bird flew out of her nest to distract me away from her growing babies. I got out the ladder so I could climb up closer and see how big the little birds were. Even with the ladder I couldn't get quite high enough to take a peek. The nest looked a lot fluffier than the last time that I checked it so I thought that the mother bird had brought in some feathers to line her nest. On the ground under the nest were quite a few bird drippings, but I decided that wouldn't be unusual because the amount of time that the nest had been there. I raised my camera as high as I could and took a photo. The birds very very, very quiet and very very still. I didn't want to scare them, so I tried to be very quick about taking the picture. I'd have to wait until I was inside and downloaded the pictures onto my computer before I could see what was actually there.

To my surprise there were several birds, and they weren't babies without feathers, either! I saw at least three, and there might have been another one, but I don't really think there was any more space for any more. It was definitely crowded in there. Well, I also discovered that it wasn't feathers lining their nest to make it more cozy....... The new birds looked like they were as big as their mother, and their nest was very messy. No wonder! That was a lot of birds in a tiny space together. They have to have all of their feathers before they can fly out of their nest, and I'm not sure how long it had been since they had hatched.

That was so fun to see. I wonder when they will be big enough to fly away? I wonder how many bugs the mother bird has to bring home every day to feed her 'not so small' birds? I've read that a bird can eat as much as twice their weight in food, so if she only had 3 birds plus herself how much food would that be if she were about the size of a half cup? Wow, that's 4 cups of bugs a day! What do you think about that?

I looked up what kind of sparrows live in Bakersfield, and as near as I can tell, it's called a nesting house sparrow. Here's a picture that I found of what they might look like closer up.