"In the Leafy Treetops"

A mommy and daddy bird moved into one of the trees in our backyard and had a little family! We discovered them yesterday when, while we were playing outside, Darwin spotted the mother in her nest and tried to climb the tree to get to her. The feisty little mama went into attack mode and chased him right out, then continued to swoop don and attack him until he could run under the house. Emmett and I thought this was pretty funny, until both she AND the daddy bird decided we were also a threat and started to swoop down after us also! We had to run inside to escape.

This morning, Casey manage to sneak over to the nest while the parents were away, and this is what he found:

Pretty weird looking, huh? But very cool! They are alive and well and I have seen their little heads poking up when their mommy and daddy bring them food, but they look brand new. So far we can still play in our backyard, as long as we don't look in the direction of the nest too often. I tried to get a picture of the mother sitting on her nest (zoomed in from far away). I explained that I'm a mother too and just wanted to get a picture of what a good job she's doing, but she came after me anyway. Still, I'm thrilled at having cute baby birds in our tree. I just hope Darwin doesn't kill them all, because he's quite the skillful hunter.We used to have a couple of pretty yellow finches living in our backyard as well. We don't anymore and, although he's just a cat doing what cats do, I couldn't hardly look at Darwin for a day or two. A week after the first was killed, he got the other one as well. Heartbreaking.