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.

This little mocking bird fledgling just stole a podicarpus berry from my front porch. He sits atop a oak tree taking a breather. 

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.

Baby Cardinal - about 3 weeks old

While mom and dad are busy preparing for a new brood building a nest (the nest is done but not in use right yet) right here in our backyard they are also busy weening this little one. I will refer to it as a he for the sake of simplicity but I am not sure if it is a boy or girl yet. He is molting and has some red but so does mom in all the same places. He still has some baby fuzz on him. I think he is about 3 weeks old but I am not sure because I only noticed him a week ago. He is a big little guy but it is common for baby birds to be the same size as their parents. This little guy seems bigger than them. He is a chubber! This is the second day the little one has been left alone quite a bit. Yesterday, he had his first visit to the bird feeding dish all by himself and he ate around it. Today, he is like a pro at it, jumping on the rim and even in it! He tried to show his papa this first thing this morning how good he was at it,and he got chased away 3 times, I think being told to go get some insects first. You need your protein! Kinda like when you were told to eat your vegetables at the table as a child.  Anyways, he seems pretty content and confident to be alone. He is not crying for food like the mockingbird babies do when learning to be more independent. His flying skills are improving, so speedy I actually thought he was one of his parents this morning coming in. He is reacting appropriately to scary things like when our cat accidentally got outside this morning he flew away real quick. He can hold his own with brutal short rain storms we have had yesterday and today too.

Here is the little guy puffed up drying out, preening himself  in a oak tree after a horrendous windy rain storm. I went out to look for him to make sure he was okay.

Here is a slide show with more of the baby if you want to see more.

slide show of baby cardinal