I never looked at them, but had my head positioned so I could see them just out of the corner of my eye. The cardinal parents would fly to the fence the nest was on, check me out over and over again,and fly away. You see, in order for the remote to work, I could not be more than 6-8 feet away from the camera. It took quite a long while for the momma and daddy to get comfortable with “something different” being a bit too close to the nest. I set up my tripod and my camera and equipped with the remote for the shutter, I got in a comfy position not too far away and waited…and waited. I decided I wanted to capture the feeding by the parents, one or the other. I had snapped a couple of pics each day to monitor the growth. I had been watching this nest since I saw the cardinal momma and daddy making it. After watching the antics of the parents and babies all day, this baby is settling in for the night after his daddy coaxed him off of the ground and into a nearby rose bush. This is the day he chose to fledge the nest. This is a little cardinal baby that I had been watching since it’s birth. On this first day, they were starving! Bright Eyes Me Three!Īfter watching the momma and daddy cardinals build the nest and incubate the eggs, these baby birds were a sweet surprise. I waited patiently (or maybe un-patiently) as the incubation took place and the chicks neared hatching. I observed the momma and daddy building the nest and waited to see what would take place next. This cardinal couple built a nest in a rose bush right outside our kitchen window. So sweet that they do this for their babies and for the females they are courting! Baby Cardinal Family Dinner I noticed this male cardinal feeding his young one for a few days before I was able to catch a shot of them. Who is feeding who here? This male cardinal seems to be feeding an immature blue grosbeak. I could decide the category, so I hope it was ok to enter it in both beautiful eggs and best nest…. (which I interpreted as her acceptance of my apology □ I hope you enjoy her beautiful ‘home’ as much as we did. Momma and her eggs, and eventually the hatch-lings, welcomed us home every time we returned. I named this picture ‘Welcome Home’ as nod to their annual return, a nod for returning to that particular bush (and as a subtle apology for having wrecked their home before) as well as nod to it being right at our front door. Then they nest in the smaller bushes around our home to lay & hatch their eggs. We have a Red Japaneses Maple hybrid tree in the front center of our home that we have nick-named “The Love Shack” because every season, the Cardinals return, flock to that tree and perform their mating dances there. Bad idea in hind sight) Our front yard seems to be a micro climate for Cardinal breeding. (I had trimmed the bushes way back a few years ago. This is the first time in several years they returned to nest in this particular bush. There are 2 Bayberry bushes on either side of our front door. This photo was taken with my iPhone because my larger camera would have caused too much disturbance in the tiny access point I had to work with. Cardinal eggs Northern Cardinal and babies at nestĭiscovered this nest in the magnolia tree outside our bedroom window, where we could watch the feeding activities without disturbing the birds! Welcome Home
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