They've arrived

The baby bluebirds, that is.  When I went out on the patio this morning the first thing I noticed was a significant amount of activity in and out of the nest box.  I had to snap a few shots and then enlarge the detail to realize that both parents were collecting teeny, tiny insects/spiders and delivering them to the box.  Which could only mean one thing ... hungry little gaping mouths to feed!

Interestingly, Monsieur would bring something tiny and wait for Madame, pass the morsel to her and then let her deliver it.  In this shot, he'd just passed a minuscule spider to her and a moment later she was in the box with it.  It always kind of blows me away to watch how birds care for their young.  I will put a rather poor quality photo (taken with my cell phone in under 5 seconds) in Extra - it shows the lumpy little bodies of 4 babies with one egg yet to hatch.  Most likely these four hatched sometime during the night.  Doing they math, they should fledge around June 12-13.

Our neighbors from across the Lane are coming over later for a rather classic Memorial Weekend dinner of grilled burgers, potato salad and lots and lots of wine.  We always enjoy spending an evening laughing and chatting with them.  

Now, off to try to dig up that buddleia stump... (post script:  when I went out, my darling Hubs had already removed the stump - yet another reason I love him)

xo
Debbi