Babies!

Above: a mother bluebird sits on her five eggs. Bluebirds lay all of their eggs, one each day at dawn, before incubating. A normal nest includes 5-7 eggs. They incubate their eggs for 15-22 days after laying the last egg.

We went to go check bluebird boxes at the cemetary today.

Run down of the cemetary boxes:

--C1: empty box, no activity, but hopefully after the babies fledge, that box will get some use

--C2: a nest with 5 eggs, last week, the nest had 1 egg

--C3: mother sitting on nest (picture above), number of eggs unknown

--C4: a nest with 5 eggs, last week it had 3

--C5: FIVE BABIES! Newly hatched, a little before checking. the cracked eggshells were still in the nest and the babies were opening their mouths for their mother to feed them (compared to the rest of their bodies, their mouths are HUGE!) sadly, my camera died before being able to snap some pictures of them, so we are going back tomorrow to check up on them. Hopefully the sixth egg will have hatched and we can get pictures of all six babies.

Hopefully next week we will have another nest or two with babies. It's amazing how such a tiny little egg grows into the beautiful bluebirds flying around Orange County.

Side note: Bluebirds were sighted by both my bro and I at our school in Cypress. There is a possibility of hanging one or two boxes at the school for the birds to nest.