Concrete and Grace
A mix of edge and femininity

Apparently overnight we lost Barn Swallow egg number 6 that didn't hatch and was likely kicked out of the nest by either the parents, or the cramped five little babies into the box below.  I guess the parents have a sixth-sense about these things and will likely take care of the icky business with infertile eggs or sickly young before they have a chance of affecting the rest of the nest.   In happier news we got an Eastern Bluebird egg surprise today! We thought the female was done with her clutch of four eggs as they usually lay eggs in the early morning so when we checked around 10am there were still four… Read More

I have quite a few entries to post and things to write about in the never ending bird drama at our place coupled with a few things going on in my life (wow I have a life?!?!)  So expect to see quite a few "backdated" entries from me.   Also, a little disclaimer from me. Since Chris (my resident photog and boyfriend) is perpetually UBER busy, I will often go back and update photos to older entries as he gets them off his camera and sized/posted for public consumption. Just a heads up so you don't miss anything. I'd take photos myself with my own crappy Point-N-Shoot, however they often turn up odd, off colour or just plain horrible. There are… Read More

True to form, day four brings us four Eastern Bluebird eggs which is exciting in its own right...     However the true excitment was on the front of the house. There our likely After-second-year Barn Swallow parents welcomed their babies into the world. The nest is a jumbled mess of itty-bitty little pink-skinned wings and bodies, wispy feathers, closed-tight eyes and GIANT mouths. Can't get a good count of just how many babies hatched today because of the feathers lining… Read More

So today was a fun and exhausting day!   We did our daily checks of our bird nests to see what happened overnight and we had some surprises in store for us indeed! Checking the Eastern Bluebird box we were gifted with three pale blue eggs and our babies from the first clutch are still hanging around in the oak trees in the back and begging for food from the male as the female is keeping busy laying those eggs!   The Barn Swallow nest held our biggest surprise of the morning. We had previously had clutches of four then five eggs in our nest from last year, so when we spotted five eggs yesterday we figured they… Read More

Like clockwork, the female laid her second egg this morning, now two pale blue jellybeans occupy the deep cup nest made of grass.     One of these days I'll try to write about something more than just birds/birding, but right now with all the eggs and babies it's such a major part of my life that I can't shut up about it.   However since I'm already on a bird tangent... later in the day we did manage to sneak out and into the neighbor's yard for a good look at a few of the recent fledges and one was… Read More

Going out to the Eastern Bluebird box this morning I was fully expecting to see yet another day of nest building, but to my surprise there was one perfect, tiny, baby blue egg tucked just under the edge of the nest down deep in the cup.     I'm excited to see how many eggs are laid in this clutch since the pair of birds had five from their first clutch and all five fledged.  We're still keeping our eyes out for the babies from the first clutch. We know they're around as we can… Read More

It took some work and some doing, but we finally convinced the Female Eastern Bluebird to build a nest in the brand new "McMansion" nest box that we put up at the site of her first successful nest attempt.   I had moved her "old" box to the alternate location about 25 yards away (holes facing different directions) with the hope that she'd take to the new box. I only had the "new" box mounted on one pole and because of its size and difference in weight, it wobbled a bit in the wind. Of course when that happened, the wire mesh platform inside rattled like crazy, so out that came. Next a Male House Sparrow started… Read More

Sad day in our neighborhood... well sadness mixed with happiness.   Yesterday our baby Eastern Bluebirds were getting really active in the nest box and at least a couple of them were getting their entire torsos (and a foot here and there) up in the entry hole and taking a good look at the world that awaited them. I was pretty convinced that the next day (today) they would fledge, or even perhaps the day after as evidenced in the photo below...     Sadly my assumptions were correct. We got up and dressed… Read More

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So no sooner than I posted my previous blog entry did we get a chance to sneak up on the barn swallow's nest and take another mirror photo that revealed.... TA DA! FIVE beautifully brown-speckled white eggs nestled inside a ton of soft feathers.    Not only that, but the baby bluebirds decided that they're big enough and curious enough to start poking their heads out of the nesting box. Unfortunately the parents still don't appreciate us being in a  50 foot radius around the box (even WITH mealworms) and start chittering so that the babies all fake being "asleep" when that happens. Makes photo  opportunities near impossible,… Read More