Canary Clutch

After sitting calmly and quietly on her eggs for two weeks, Aunt Jo was a little anxious today, and although she remained on her nest, she moved around a lot, checking beneath her and begging food from Uncle Jessie with a babyish "peep peep peep" and fluttering her wings.  Before I left, I shooed our sweet and very patient Momma Jo off her eggs, and from my short person vantage point, I tiptoed and saw the tops of 3 whole-looking turquoise eggs in the nest just before I ran an errand at 5:30PM.  By 6:30PM, David surprised me with a text picture of two newly hatched chicks!

There were three turquoise eggs, each about the size of a peanut M&M.  Now one unhatched egg and two of the teeniest dime-sized baby birds lay next to the remnants of their halved shells.  Barely audible peeps come from these ugly babies, sporting downy halos of mini fluff about their heads and big black b-b eyes hide under closed lids.  Still feeding from their yolk sac, they won't begin eating until morning, but they are already practicing the open mouth beg.  We are all completely smitten!

Momma Jo was polite enough to allow me a peek and I took the above video of the chicks at less than an hour old.  My husband had just gotten home, and when he saw me videoing the chicks, he panicked, thinking the mother hen would abandon the nest. You can hear Mark having a fit in the video, saying she's going to "freak out".   That won't happen with my very people-friendly domesticated birds.  It is my guess that the chick that didn't pop his head up was last hatched and still recovering from all that hard work.  Egg #3 should hatch in the next 24 hours. The discarded shells were nowhere to be found the next morning and I suppose the parents ate them.  I KNOW which is the last egg laid, as the final egg in a canary clutch is always a more vibrant turquoise than the rest, and this is the one that remains.

My 33-year old niece Karen called, bubbling about "her" new chick, already named Pippa after Princess Kate's sister.  Who will take the other two?  I think my parents may want one, as daddy loves all little animals and my mother can whistle just as beautifully as...a bird!