Happy Hatch Day

Just a few days ago I blipped the first brood of House Wrens which were about a week old. I’ve been monitoring the second box daily as I anticipated they’d hatch this week. When I opened the box today, Mama flew out, chattering madly at me. I quickly stuck my phone in the box, snapped a shot and retreated. To discover, when I looked at the snap that three of the six eggs were hatched!

Yes, those odd slug-like things on the left are baby wrens - naked, blind and completely helpless. At this point they really can’t even lift their heads, but that won’t stop mama from jamming little insects into their mouths. Papa will occasionally bring a treat to the kids, but mostly he just sings. Which might cause some of you to view him as a bit of a deadbeat, but his singing keeps competing males away. And this is good because usually if a competing male successfully woos a female, he’ll kill any nestlings and destroy eggs. Sounds brutal but this is the way he ensures his dna will get passed along. I’ve only had this happen once when a rival male evicted the resident male, and tossed all the eggs out of the box.

By the way, just for context, the nest hole is about the size of a golf ball and the eggs are like small jelly beans.

It’s crazy hot today, with a big dose of humidity - really unpleasant to be outdoors. I’ve limited my time outside to less than 20 minutes at a time. Tomorrow will be a little cooler so I’m meeting a friend for a walk after my radiation treatment.

Radiation was a little longer today because they also did scans. But I’m now down to 9 more days, so yay! And only 4 more broad area treatments; after that, the final five “boost” treatments will be targeted just to the area where the tumor was. Which means that my skin should start healing. I will be very happy to see the end of this itchy, oozy rash.

Dark with ginger today.

Xo
Debbi