Protecting Baby Birds and Nest with Christmas Lighting

Beautiful Life

Since past week, my fascination has been on the baby birds above my garage door.  I have noticed the nest for two months.  There are four small nests above the garage door.  Only one is not empty this time.  There is an experiment and faith on my part though ...

hungry

hiding

Back in late March (now is mid-July), I noticed a small nest at the upper right hand side of the garage door.  Each morning when I walked through the front door entrance, two flying birds (one with a red color neck) caught my attention.  Soon, I noticed a bird perching on that small nest.  Then, I made a stupid change.  We still had our Christmas lighting hanging at the front of the house due to my laziness to remove it.  I removed all the lighting to have a better sighting of the perching bird and possible new baby birds.

Next morning, I saw a beautiful (much bigger) blue bird jumping from the roof to the side of the nest and stick its head in. Immediately I realized the removed Christmas lighting was a facade to protect the small birds' nesting and hatching activity.  The bird parents were nowhere in the next few days, but I could still hear them singing from afar.  Regret, if not remorse, prompted me to re-install the complete Christmas lighting to the front of the house in early April, hoping that the bird parents will come back, and start a new home again.  Neighbors looked at me, must be wondering what this guy was doing to re-install Christmas lighting at April!

Finally, a breakthrough came.  Two months ago, I heard the small red bird singing again in front of our house.  It may be a brag to claim that I can recognize their singing.  Next, the new nest popped up on the upper left hand, instead of the right hand side of the garage door, then perching activity.  We climbed a ladder and took a photo of the three baby birds.

This is our first time to see wild baby birds since I moved into this home eight years ago.  Wonder if it is our new garden making a difference.  The Christmas lighting will also stay all-year-round from now on.  My curiosity led me to order an inexpensive bag of wild bird food from Home Depot online, in case their parents need extra help to feed three hungry bird-lings.

Learning gardening is a new hobby, as learn-and-earn credit card travel rewards takes little time.  I hope to share about gardening fun in the near future.

Update 7/23/2014

The birds have grown and flown away.  I decided to clean up the nest area for the birds next year, and found two unhatched bird eggs in a old-looking nest.  On the left side of the the photo is my car key.