Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The BEST Kind of Visitors...

GRANDMAS, of course! One biological (Grammy) and one borrowed (friend Nancy) - two is always better than one! :-)
In true Grandma fashion, the kids were spoiled with sugary treats, trips to the toy store with money, bowling, mini-golf, dinner out, and a hot dog feast when Mom and Dad went out - alone!





Mom, helping me make the girls' room a little more "girly".

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Patio is Crowded

Last spring we had robins show up looking for a home on the motion light in our back patio. After several days of trying to get the sticks to stay on the slippery light, Jason attached chicken wire to the top of the light and, voila!, the robins built a nest. After the last of the three chicks was gone, Jason carefully removed the nest (still attached to the wire) and put it in our garage for the winter (I had no idea he did this!).
So, this spring arrived and we saw a female robin persistently coming through the patio, looking for her nest on the light. Jason brought the nest out and put it back up, the robin immediately began fixing it up to her liking. After getting the nest ready, she left for about three days (mating), then returned and didn't leave for about four weeks. Since the nest is directly out our back window, the kids and I were obsessed with the birds and watched them constantly. I even set up the tripod and got some video of the action. All four eggs hatched and all four chicks fluttered away - I got a video of the very last one leaving the nest. I haven't seen any of them flying around the yard, so I hope they're still out there....somewhere!

Then, about a week ago, Jason was moving my patio hanging baskets around and found a nest with three eggs in one of the baskets - they belong to a pretty red house finch! The nest is out of site, unless I stand on a ladder, so there won't be too many pictures.
I sorted through all the bird video and put together a mini slide show of the highlights. I learned something new this year about robins and how they keep their nest so clean....you might find it interesting too! :-)

**There is no sound with this video because the music I bought and put in it, is copyright protected and YouTube will not publish it! I was going to find new music and rework the video, but it's already taken me three weeks to get this far, so here is the original video without music!