Summer Gone To The Birds

 (this will be backdated to July 2020)

Derek's front porch has a cute swing. It's been featured in many family photos. In the summer of 2020 however, a new family took ownership of said swing. A hummingbird family! There on one of the top knots, a mama hummingbird built a nest and laid two tiny eggs. Derek's family had a front row (or front window) view of all the hummingbird happenings, and Derek got some video so family and friends could also get a peek.  Here's some of the video updates he shared on Facebook ...

https://youtu.be/5Qn6v4fWJlo

... and amazingly enough, this wasn't the only bird family to take up residence at D&D's abode, a little earlier in the year, a momma robin built a nest and laid four little eggs. Derek documented that too ...

https://youtu.be/o3JJyyEydco

In July, Derek wrote "Final hummingbird update: The birds have flown the nest, and the Westras have taken black their porch! We loved all the birds this year, and had a 6 for 6 success ratio (with all four baby robins and 2 baby hummingbirds surviving). The hummingbirds were so cute and fun to watch, but they were SO messy and pooped all over. Our Saturday chores included deep cleaning the whole porch, and removing their nests. Sad to see them go, but glad to have our space back. "

This wasn't the first hummingbird nest for one of the Westras. 

Back in 2016, when Shane's family was living in California, Alicia wrote ...

• (February 21) The girls discovered a hummingbird nest in one of the trees by our garage! We were excited to find that it even has two tiny hummingbird eggs in it. 
• (March 6) one of the hummingbird eggs in the nest hatched this week! Now there is a little ball of feather fluff with a beak in the nest. We haven't gotten a great photo yet...we'll keep trying. 
• (March 13) We've been anxiously watching our baby hummingbird grow! The other egg never hatched, sadly. The baby hummingbird is almost filling up the whole nest. It's fun to peek in at it.

The Blackham home has housed some birds too ... but they just get starlings, which aren't as cute! You can check out a post on the Blackham Blog about them (Noisy Birds). And then of course, there were the DUCKS (several blog posts about the ducks, but to see the hatching caught on camera, click HERE). Ducklings are on the go just a few hours out of the egg, very different than the helpless little robins and hummingbirds. Another winged set of progression pictures and video of  Monarch Memories is on the Blackham Blog as well.