Pretty Sky Things

Shortly before May 1st, I started hearing some especially loud and persistent cheeping coming from our front door. At first, I thought nothing of it because birds liked to come by our wreath to grab twigs and whatnot for their nests. But the cheeping continued, and so I looked through the glass window on the door.

And there was a little bird tail.

Based on the sounds of the cheeping, my guess was a house finch.

Papa House Finch hard at work, on the lookout in front of our house. House finch confirmed.

We didn’t want to scare mama sitting on the nest, so we avoided using the front door, but deliveries and loud noises outside would scare her off the nest for a few seconds, so I took one of those times as an opportunity to look.

It was funny to see the fur, because we’re pretty sure that’s our dog’s fur they must’ve collected from the backyard, where it’s left around after brushing him.

And there’s Mama House Finch, sitting on the nest.

Eggs! So cute. A bit of a pain to not use our front door, but it would be worth it. Wouldn’t want to scare the fledglings out of the nest too early.

I looked up the incubation period for house finches: about 12-14 days. And apparently, it’s very common for them to build nests on wreaths. She kept getting scared off by deliveries and loud cars outside, but still, we avoided using the front door ourselves. If any chicks or fledglings fell out too early, it could be dangerous, especially with the heat that radiates off of our white house for so many hours each day.

I still had to weed the garden beds around up front though and I felt really bad about scaring Mama off each time. I also have a few plants on the front door step that suffered a bit. It’d be worth it though.

One morning, I was out weeding and Mama was there, and Papa was hanging around. Later that day, I opened the door to grab something dropped off, because Mama would have already been scared off for a few seconds. My boyfriend was standing above the door upstairs though, and said: “There’s no eggs in there.” I realized I also hadn’t heard any cheeping for awhile. I opened the door back up and took another picture of the nest.

The eggs were gone 😦

I searched around the door step, yard, and garden beds, looking for some chicks or broken egg shells. Nothing. I was devastated.

We looked it up, and other birds like crows and blue jays will eat house finch eggs. It was strange to me that there was no signs of egg shell bits left around…but surely it had to have been a predatory bird, and not something sinister. I felt guilty, worried that her being constantly scared off had drawn attention to the nest’s location. She had just been there that morning. Could there have been some crow or blue jay hanging around in the branches nearby when I was weeding, watching? My boyfriend convinced me that was unreasonable, and that we did more than most do by avoiding using the door at all.

I miss hearing Mama House Finch cheeping through the door, and seeing Papa diligently guarding the area, but I suppose that’s the circle of life. Our yard attracts all kinds of birds, and with that comes predation as well.