Empty Nest

Noooo!!!  My baby birds are gone!!!  They finally left the nest today and I didn't even get to say goodbye.  I can hear them chirping in the trees outside the fence, but they won't show their little faces.  I saw mama bird, but she yelled at me to go away.  I hope they all survive their flight training and come back to visit us.  I left out the last of the mealworms so they can have a snack for the road.  Now the only baby I have left is my loud-mouthed beagle.

Here are the last couple pictures I took of the babies, and they don't really look like babies anymore.  They've inherited their mother's evil glare.

Bird Food

We bought some mealworms for the wrens to eat.  They're pretty gross.

We've spotted some other birds trying to steal the worms and I've had to run outside and yell at them.  I'm not trying to feed all the neighborhood birds!  But I think mama and daddy bird are getting most of them, especially since the babies don't really look like babies anymore.  They look like that dancing penguin from Happy Feet... they're almost full grown but they've still got a lot of baby fuzz.

Every time I go out on my porch, mama and daddy bird pop out and start chirping at me, like I'm not allowed on my own porch!  It's not like I'm the reason their babies have a home and free food...

The birds have opened their eyes

The baby birds are getting so fuzzy and cute!  They've finally opened their eyes and they're begging for food.  You can clearly see four hungry little beaks in there!  I'm glad all of the eggs hatched and have made it so far.

Veggie Soup

Something has been getting into my tomatoes!  It doesn't look like worms and I never see squirrels or chipmunks back here, so I think it's a bird pecking into the ripe tomatoes.  That bird has already ruined at least half a dozen perfectly good tomatoes!

My two pepper plants are growing crazy slow, but the green peppers and banana peppers that have been growing one or two at a time have been getting huge!  I finally picked my first green pepper today and it's way more impressive than the little ones I was growing last summer.

I'm going to slice it up with some of my tomatoes and cook a homemade pizza.  BEST way to eat homegrown green peppers!  We cooked about a dozen little roma tomatoes today in a vegetable soup with a zucchini, a squash, a sweet onion, a bunch of little creamer potatoes, and carrots in beef broth.  We boiled the tomatoes for 30 seconds, then threw them in some icy water, and the peels came right off!  We had never done that before and it was really cool.  Todd even started the soup with a roux!  (Paisley pronounces it aahhhrrooooooo!!)

So the tomatoes are growing great and the plant is as tall as I am!  Well, technically it's only as tall as me when I hold the tallest branch up, but it's still impressive.

Baby Birds: Day 4

The Wrens Hatched!

The baby wrens hatched over the weekend!  I peeked into the nest today when mama and daddy bird were out finding food.  They're super fresh, so they look pretty gross right now, but they should be big enough to leave the nest in the next two weeks.

I didn't get the greatest picture, but I was scared that mama bird was going to come back and get mad.  Maybe I should buy them a container of worms as a late baby shower gift, haha.