Fidgety Pilgrim: Lovely Little Drama, Part II

For Part I, go here: http://fidgetypilgrim.blogspot.com/2011/05/lovely-little-drama-part-i.html

Upon returning from my best friend's house, I made a beeline for the front door. The young finches had doubled or trebled in size during the week I was gone; they were nearly half the size of the adults. Their feathers had come in. The had lost most of their downy fuzz, with the exception of white poufs over each eye that resembled eyebrows. The five of them barely fit the nest.

At this point the adult finches were working around the clock to forage and bring food back to the nest. Always, always, I would hear their high trilling song first, then see them alight in one of the trees near the front porch to do reconnaissance before approaching. The young finches, who hardly moved and never made a peep when the parents were away, came to life at the first note of their parents' calls, flapping and fluttering and chirping their little heads off.

Around May first, I noticed a change taking place in the feeding routine. Instead of regurgitating food for her young every time she came to the nest, Mama Finch began bringing whole leaves, roots and stems once in a while. She would tuck them into the edge of the nest and fly away. At first the babies were confused, maybe even indignant, about her refusal to place food directly in their mouths. But they caught on in no time. Though it was obvious that they preferred to be fed directly, they were soon nibbling at the selection provided.

A pair of the young finches were becoming more active. Intrepid, experimental, they perched at the edge of the wreath, stretching their wings and picking out the few pin feathers that remained. They jostled each other for their turn at flight simulation. Practicing, but not quite ready to make the leap. I ventured a guess that they were the first two that hatched: they were bigger, and two to four days ahead of the rest of the clutch in terms of development.

The smaller ones stayed beneath for another day, content to sleep in feathery little balls while their older siblings messed about.

I was anticipating and dreading the day the baby finches would fledge from the nest, in roughly equal proportions. 'You're growing up too fast,' I would tell them as I watched their antics through the door. 'It seems like just yesterday you were mere eggs.'

On Thursday, May 5th, I came downstairs and made breakfast. As I walked into the dining room I heard a familiar warble and caught a flicker of red in the tree outside the window. The adult male finch was checking in. I set my plate on the table and reached for the camera, because a couple of the babies were up, flapping like mad at the edge of the nest.

Before I could flip on the camera and get myself into position, the mama finch had flown down from a different tree and landed on one side of the wreath. She bobbed her head at the two older fledglings and flew away again. Quick as lightning, so quickly they probably surprised themselves, the two were away with her.

Within an hour, two more of the fledglings had left the nest in the same manner. The adults perched on tree branches and sang encouragement, the fledglings' little wings kicked into gear, one of the adults swooped past the nest, and off they went. Just like that.

The last little fledgling suddenly found himself alone in the nest. He seemed a little at loose ends not to have his siblings surrounding him. For the first couple hours he stayed low in the nest unless one of the adults came around. Eventually he rose, stretched and started trying to figure out the whole flying business.

He had a few false starts. This made him become, from all appearances, despondent. He huddled at the edge of the nest, all tucked into himself. He didn't preen or flap. He only roused himself when one of the adults came near.

I left at three that afternoon to run a few errands. Two hours later when I returned, that last little fledgling had garnered his nerve and gone away like the rest. None of them came back. After a few days we removed and cleaned the wreath, and replaced it with another.

A second house finch pair was nesting on the drain spout of Friendly Neighbor's garage. I was keeping an eye on it, too, but those babies fledged about two days ago.

As I began writing this post on May 17th, I heard a familiar lilting song. I looked up from the keyboard to see four house finches perched on the new front door wreath. Two males and two females. Their markings differed from both adult pairs that had so recently inhabited nests nearby.

I couldn't tell whether any of these four were part of the clutch that left on May 5th. The fledglings had not yet gained the distinctive markings that allow me to distinguish male from female. But they did seem momentarily disoriented when they landed on the wreath. It was as if they knew the location and shape was right, but couldn't figure out why everything else had changed.

One of the pairs came back a couple more times that day. The female picked a few choice twigs out from the side of the wreath. I haven't seen them since. I've been suffering from empty nest syndrome.

During the course of this lovely little drama, I did some research to ascertain that these were indeed house finches, and to discover what their mating and breeding habits were. I found some great general information about tons of bird species here: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/house_finch/lifehistory. From this page, I stumbled across this fantastic site, which is run by Cornell University's Ornithology program: http://watch.birds.cornell.edu/nest/home/index. I was pleased to be able to add my observations about the breeding pair and the development of the five babies to their research base.