Birdie Landlords

Hooray! We woke up this morning to discover a pair of sparrows had taken a liking to Chicky-babe's birdhouse and were busily gathering nesting materials and adding them to the box. After spending a long time online trying to figure out what type of birds they were, I finally gave up the hunt temporarily. It wasn't until Big Daddy and I were browsing through birding books in Borders on our date tonight that he found a picture of the exact bird. Here's what they look like:

top: male bottom: female

We are excited to observe this behavior right in our own backyard! I did a little more research about them and learned that they can lay 1-8 eggs which will hatch in as little as 10 days and the babies will fledge at about 14 days!!!! We'd better keep our eyes open for these little guys.

(I will post pics of our actual birds as soon as I get our digital camera repaired. For now, these are some Audubon pictures from the web. Our birdies look exactly like these ones though.)

Here is a pic of what their eggs will look like:


We will post about our progress often. This will be fun!