July 14, 2019 - Eastern Phoebe Nest

I’ve posted a couple of these photos on my Facebook page but now I’m going to put the whole story together. Each year Eastern Phoebes build a nest in our boat lift. On June 10, there were five eggs in the nest.

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Usually they build the nest in a corner of the boat lift frame but this year they chose to put it on top of the battery box. That meant the nest was right at eye level each time we took the boat out, giving us a front row seat to observe the entire nesting process.

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We are not at our lake home full-time, so I didn’t see the nest each day. But, by June 20, the eggs had hatched. The baby’s eyes were not open yet and they had no feathers, just some downy fuzz.

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Two days later, some feathers started to appear. The parent birds were busy trying to keep up with the demands of feeding five hungry chicks.

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July 4 was the next time I saw them, and they looked remarkably different. They had a full set of feathers, but they were not ready to leave the nest yet. They had grown so much that only two of them could fit in the nest. The top of the battery box at least gave the rest of them a place to sit. They look kind of grumpy about the living arrangements.

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On July 6, one of the chicks was out of the nest and sitting on a bungee cord that holds the boat lift cover on.

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When I arrived on July 11, all the chicks had left the nest. It was fun watching them grow but they sure left a mess for me to clean up!

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