Birth Announcement - Quadruplets!

Mark-the-birdling was born yesterday (July 1st) and lays nestled between his two brothers and resting his head on the egg of his soon-to-be-hatched sister-bird Jocelyn. Mark-the-boy and Jocelyn-the-girl often tell us that Mark shoved Jocelyn aside in Heaven to come first, so we figured Mark-the-bird would be the one who jumped to the front of the hatchling pecking order....and, sure enough, he came a full day ahead of the others!




Mark-the-bird was not lonely long! His three other siblings hatched today. All four are nestled close together. Notice their newborn white feathers and pink skin. We'll watch to see how soon the real feathers grow in. Notice how tiny these babies are...those are my fingertips resting next to the nest. These babies are no bigger than the first joint of my fingers!


All four new hatchlings sleeping peacefully while their Mother Bird goes in search of food.

We've finally got a photo of the Mother Bird perched on top of the patio cover beam. She is a small brown bird that appears to have some red feathers on her upper crest. You can see what a perfectly safe and inconspicuous spot she chose for her nest. The nest is to the right down between the large beams she is sitting on (out of view). We can't even get our heads up there to look into the nest, so our small camera is doing the spying for us!

So now we'll see if we can catch the Mother Bird feeding her infants and giving them flying lessons. We figure which ever bird tries to jump out of the nest first must be Brent-bird since he is our fearless daredevil and which ever bird is constantly bossing his mother must be Blake-bird since that is what I get all day long from Blake-boy.