We’re used to birds around our yard. We encourage it. We put up several bird feeders next to our deck, after all. We hang up a new bird house each year after completing one with our cub scouts. And every year those bird houses have been occupied. We had a family of robins at our previous house who nested every year in our lilac bush. But this year brought us something new we’ve not encountered before.
My wife went to clean out the leaves that had built up in a corner where our fence meets our house and found some odd looking rocks among the leaves. She soon realized they weren’t rocks, but quail eggs–five of them. She left them alone, and later on checked back to find they had not been abandoned.
Over the next several days the mother would be gone for periods of time, and every time we checked the nest there would be two more eggs than previously. I think we were up to eleven before the mother stopped leaving the nest so we could sneak in and count.
So now we’re providing a maternity ward for future fuzzballs. We have a group of quail or two in our neighborhood, and each year they suddenly show up with chicks in tow, not much bigger than my thumb. They’re the cutest little things. And this year we’ll know where they came from.
For the next three weeks, however, we are trying not to disturb the mother. This is not easy, considering she’s nested not far from our garbage bins. We worry about her–that’s a rather exposed location, and she’s nested on the ground. There haven’t been stray cats around for a while now, but that doesn’t mean there’s no danger. But we can’t think of anything we can do to add protection that wouldn’t either make things potentially worse for her or frighten her too much while we put it up.
So for now we wait, we worry, and we keep our eyes open. Good luck, little quail mama!
If we’re able to get pictures of the chicks we’ll post them. But until then, this is what they’re supposed to look like:
We have a nest of birds under our dining area. We think they are probably Robbins, but until they come out we won’t know for sure. We hear the babies carrying on every time a parent comes back with food. They are quite a vocal bunch. There are a couple of small holes in the skirting that the parents must be using as an entrance but we are interested to know how they are going to get the babies out when it’s time to fly as neither hole is at ground level.
They picked a good spot for the nest. It was pouring rain today, but the mama and the nest were dry and cozy. The roof reaches just far enough to give some cover.