Baby Birds

About a month ago, we noticed that there were quite a lot of blue birds sitting on our swing set.  We decided to get a "blue bird house" (thank you, Menards, for having such specific items for us novice bird-watchers) and we installed it on the very end of the swing set.  It's been fun watching the blue birds fly to and from the bird house, until yesterday when we got a harsh reality of what nature is really like.  A couple of neighbor boys were playing on the swing set when they came running up to the house shouting that there was a dead bird on the ground.  I went out to check and sure enough, there was a tiny baby bird, dead in the grass, as if it had fallen out of the house.  A little while later, we had a bunch of neighbor kids in the yard and they all started shouting that there was another baby bird in the grass but this one was alive!  I went out to check again and they were right: there was the cutest little bird just laying in the grass, opening up it's beak like it wanted it's mommy.

I had the kids sit around and guard the bird (without touching it, of course) until Chris got home a minute later.

Chris went out with rubber gloves to put the bird back in it's nest (we knew the chances of it surviving either way was slim) and as he was doing that, he noticed FOUR MORE dead baby birds in the grass.  What the heck??  We watched the pattern of the birds and put two and two together.  Our theory is that one blue bird family made a nest and had babies in the bird house, but another blue bird couple wanted to claim the nest as theirs.  So, they pushed all the babies out to make it their own.  We're not sure what's going to happen--if the last little bird will make it or not--but we've seen several Chickadees poke their heads in the house, then sit on top of it like maybe the bird house still belongs to someone.  It was sad for the kids to see the dead birds, but it was also a really neat experience to see how nature works and also to see that adorable little bird close up.  I hope he makes it!