Glory & Mrs. Cardinal
Aren't they a cute couple?
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| Glory was giving his wife a seed. It was so adorable to witness! |
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April 12-18
It was an amazing morning to notice that the Cardinal family was building a nest in a small bush just outside our kitchen window.
After each piece was brought in, be it twig or leaf, Mrs. Cardinal would do a little tamping and molding. One day after the work was finished, Glory came over, perched on the edge of it and tweeted. I don't know if he was looking for Mrs. Cardinal or just doing a final inspection, but the nest was complete.
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April 23
This morning Royal peeks through the blinds and exclaims, "There's an egg!!!"
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Logically, we decided to enter this into our Nature Journals.
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| Royal's |
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| Alice's |
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| Mine |
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April 24
We woke up to another laid egg. Then Mrs. Cardinal spent time on and off throughout the day sitting on her eggs.
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April 25
There was yet another egg in the nest. Today Mrs. Cardinal sat on her nest almost continually throughout the day.
After a quick break, she would return. It was so cute watching her get situated, shuffling the eggs around within her underbelly feathers.
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In addition to entries in our Nature Journals, we kept a running log of happenings with the Cardinal family in our Calendar of Firsts.
April 24
We woke up to another laid egg. Then Mrs. Cardinal spent time on and off throughout the day sitting on her eggs.
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April 25
There was yet another egg in the nest. Today Mrs. Cardinal sat on her nest almost continually throughout the day.
After a quick break, she would return. It was so cute watching her get situated, shuffling the eggs around within her underbelly feathers.
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April 26
A scary, too-close-for-comfort batch of tornadoes ran through our neck of the woods.
A scary, too-close-for-comfort batch of tornadoes ran through our neck of the woods.
During the time our family was bunkered in our inner-most, windowless room, I pondered:
Would our Cardinal family survive?
Would our Cardinal family survive?
We were all so happy that on the morning of April 27, Mrs. Cardinal was found sitting on her eggs, nest still intact :-)
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May 7
Fourteen days after the first egg was laid, Baby #1 hatched!
May 8
We awoke to see Baby #2 and Baby #3 already welcomed into the world.
Later Alice spotted Mrs. Cardinal eating her babies' eggshells. Apparently the calcium is very beneficial to her during the nesting season.
Royal decided to enter the baby cardinals into his Nature Journal:
How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
Psalm 104:24
This has been the most awe-inspiring nature study we have ever experienced.
We are so grateful for this very personal account the Lord has allowed us to witness of His creation,
and we will continue to monitor and document this amazing study in nature as the baby cardinals continue to grow.
However, I think the babies deserve a post all their own, so thus ends this chronicle of Glory & Mrs. Cardinal.
Oh, and if you haven't read the story from the Burgess Bird Book, go have a quick read here and enjoy some more particulars about Glory & Mrs. Cardinal!
Such beautiful work! We don't have cardinals here in CA, so it's on my kids' bucket list. I will have to show them this post, including your sketches and the Book of Firsts (which they will surely recognize ;)). How wonderful to find a nest. I am always awestruck by the beauty of bird's eggs.
ReplyDeleteOh thank you, Celeste. It is also amazing to think that a bird like the Cardinal, which is SO common here, is on the bucket-list of "must-see" birds for someone else in the country/world.
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