Fledglings at the Feeders

We have two bird feeders hanging above the little patio of our apartment, and the most regular species that we have as visitors are House Finches.  We have them all year round with large numbers in spring and fall as the waves of migrants move through central California, a smaller number that stays through winter, and just a handful of birds regularly come to the feeders during the summer breeding season.  I strongly suspect that this is because the House Finches space their breeding territories out to where only two or three are close enough to allow the birds access to the feeders without them having to cross into a neighbors territory too much.

Yesterday morning one of the pairs was accompanied for the first time by two fledglings!  These young birds were capable of a decent amount of flight, thought they were still doing so somewhat clumsily, but they are completely reliant on their parents for food.  Each of the two fledglings picked one of the parents and followed that adult around from fence top to ground and back again begging for food all the while. The parents are more then skilled enough to fly up and land on the feeders, but the young ones do not yet have the skills.  Instead, the young birds simply give their begging calls and tremble their wings in the hope that this behavior will trigger the adult they are following around to turn and feed them.  The adults spent most of their time picking seeds off the ground and, when they had gathered a crop full, feeding the fledgling trailing behind them.  The fledglings watched the adults picking seeds off the ground with obvious interest, but little understanding.  The second most common bird at our feeders are Western Scrub Jays.  We have one pair of Jays that have claimed out feeders and let no other Jays come anywhere close to them.  This pair built a nest in a Cottonwood tree just across the parking lot from out patio.  It is about 20 ft above the ground on a branch that is particularly dense with foliage.  Today, when they came to the feeders, they were accompanied for the first time by one fledgling of their own!  This young bird also has the occasional tuft of down still poking out through its course Juvenal feathers.  The young Jay also seems to have about the same level of understanding of the world as the young House Finches seem to.  It follows its parents and begs for food.  It watches the adults gather seeds and break them open with apparent curiosity, but does not have any understanding of how to go about actually performing this task.  Instead, it follows its parents and begs for food with fluttering wings.

It will take a little while for any of these fledglings to figure out that those hard black things are sunflower seeds and that there is food inside them.  It will take them all even a bit longer to figure out how to actually open the shell.  A very fun process to watch.