Fledglings

The birds who live in my decorative birdhouses are glad that horrible hot streak has cooled down, I know I am. It is fledgling season around here. This might be my favorite part of the summer. The garden birdbath fountain is full of colorful babies just learning how to swim and fly. I find it interesting that they seem to be larger than their parents.

The baby Stellar抯 Jays are hysterical at the bird house feeders and they keep falling into the water fountain. For some reason their little topknots don抰 work yet and I laugh at them for having bad hair (feather) days. It really is the only way I can tell this year抯 crop of babies from the adults.

I also have a huge flock of evening gross beaks that call my yard home. They don抰 live in any of the wooden bird houses because they like to live 200 ft up in the tops of the local conifers. But they feed at the decorative feeders 6 or 7 at a time and swim in the garden fountain and birdbath. The dads are beautifully colored with white, grey, black and touches of bright yellow. They have a chevron of bright yellow over their eyes which make them look like they are wearing Varnet sunglasses. They compete with the Stellar抯 jays for food at all the decorative bird feeders and for water at the birdbath and the pond. The ladies aren抰 nearly as pretty but they are all big clowns and love attention.

I went to drive off the other day, when I heard a scritch, scritch, scritch on the roof of my truck. I realized it was one of the babies, suddenly it slid down my windshield and rested on a wiper pecking at the window. I knew he wasn抰 too well versed in flying skills yet so I didn抰 want to just drive off. I got out to convince him he needed to move over to the bird house feeder, the fence or maybe the birdbath water fountain. He almost got on to my hand but changed his mind and hopped over to the fence. I got to drive off laughing at his antics.