cardinal 2nd brood at the feeders.

This little cutie was dropped off to fend for himself a couple weeks ago. I don't think he is the juvenile of my cardinal couple that claims our backyard as their territory because my neighbor tells me they have nestlings in their oak tree again. Same oak tree they used for the first brood but different nest. We have watched him grow from shy around the feeders to standing up to our adult cardinal couple really giving them a run for their money. Every chance they get, they chase him and he is a defiant little thing. He comes right back and seems to win. Now I know it is mostly because the adults have nestlings right now and can't spend too much time but he thinks he is a big boy, you can tell. And, even though the mourning doves are extremely patient with the juvies, as are the adult cardinals with juvie mourning doves, this little guy is bullying them from the ground feeders. Hilarious. Here he is at our candle stick feeder hot, mouth open and tail fanned just hanging out after munching on sunflower seeds.

Fledgling Cardinals First Bath

The first brood of babies are still learning to forage and fine tuning their flying skills. The parents are still feeding them but I see them poking around on their own when left. There are two of them. Generally, mom and dad separate them, each taking one for the day, but occasionally during the day they join up to feed in our backyard and splash around. Here is one of them having his first bath. First he/she watched mom, then when she flew off, he gave it a whirl himself. These are taken through my glass window.

Nests - subdivision tree trimming-orange-plastic-ties

Today we noticed a few oak trees on our street tagged with orange ties. There is no id on them to identify who they may belong to or what they are there for.  I wonder if it is trees tagged with nests in them so they don't get the Orange County trimming, see 4/18/14 post? I took a peek to see what I could see in them. I found large leafy high nests in the main trunk where limbs branch out. Large enough for a squirrel or maybe even a raccoon. Hmmm. So I drove around the entire neighborhood (700 homes situated on an estimated 100-200 acres with 100's of trees) and found 10 trees tagged with the orange plastic ribbon in the front part of the neighborhood (where I live). I believe I checked all but three of them and they all had the same type of nest I describe above, larger nests in the main trunk bifurcation.

During my nest find, I found around 14-15 other nests in oak trees but without the orange tie. They are smaller cupping nests, the size a cardinal makes, and some are flat mourning dove. They are not obvious to see, camouflaged, blending seamlessly in the oak tree branches using oak tree moss, leaves, grass, and twigs. One of the nests, I see a female cardinal sitting in. I first found her on a branch within the tree, and I was patient to stay long enough to see where she went. I have a several pictures of it. This active nest is in a branch hanging over the street  in the trim zone. The tree is not tagged nor is any of the trees with the 14-15 passerine songbird size nests I observed.

the anonymous ribbon found on 10 trees without any identification to whom it belongs or why it is there.

large nests on the main trunk are found in the trees with orange plastic ties. These are not nests of the passerines we were focused to save. These are the easy nests to spot.

this isn't really off the main trunk bifurcation but it's a larger leafy nest - no orange tie.

------------these nests below this line are camouflaged, small, hidden. No orange tie found. One apparent nest is seen with a female cardinal sitting in it.  -----------

-------END female cardinal sitting in what looks to be a nest ---------------------

-------BEGIN sampling of other nests found in oak trees where trunk not tagged with orange tie--------

female northern cardinal - bathtime!

having a great big splash bath!

Snockered Male Cardinal on Loquat Fruit

Completely snockered. Love him.

Acts of kindness in the wild

Papa cardinal and a mourning dove share a moment. On this day, they share a cool pot together. The dove was there first. At first papa was on the green pot and then jumped up with the dove. Prior, papa was hunting insects for the fledglings, maybe he is taking a break, or maybe he just wanted the higher location for looking. No clue. But what I love is how since mama and papa cardinal have had their 3 babes, and are really working hard to care for them, the mourning doves have kicked it up a notch with kindness. It almost seems like they try to help. Here he is cutting slack allowing papa to invade his space. They have often stepped aside at the feeder and I have seen what appears to be help in guarding the nest and babes. Generally, they don't give the feeder up without a fight, so this is really quite sweet. I wonder what these two are thinking?

cardinal fledgling 14 days old - characteristics

The fledglings are growing and learning to fly. We watched mama and papa flying with them in lesson last evening. They can get from tree to tree without problem. This morning two of the three fledglings were sitting together in our crape myrtle tree. I was able to get close enough to get a shot. This is what they look like at 14 days olds. Beak is black, eyes still bulgy and beady like a lizard, little tail is growing with slight red molting, plume coming in on top of head, coloring is a brownish above, and lighter tan/brown below, slight red molting on head and wings. Later the two were snuggling together in a different tree taking a nap. I wonder where the 3rd one is? Mama and papa were not around for the length of time I was here observing, 5-10 minutes so it makes me think they may have been with the third somewhere. I hope so because I did see a hawk this morning and they eat small birds. I'll show that in my next post.