I've got babies all around me. At least two of the bird houses I've installed have families there. Both of the ones I know are occupied are attached to the eaves of the house - one in front and one in back. The one I'm watching now has very noisy babies in it. Mom and Dad are both very busy fetching things, and when one perches on the outside the kids inside burst out with a explosion of "cheep cheep cheep" which I assume means "feed me feed me feed me". Besides the noise, which starts very early, there are also by-products beneath the box that have to be cleaned up regularly. I still like watching them, though. One year my nephew spent a whole afternoon on this couch watching them, both with the naked eye and binoculars. And one year I happened to catch the moment they fledged. I think it is a single moment - they emerge from the nest, and I don't think they go back. They spilled out one at time, fell/fluttered to the ground, and in a few minutes fluttered back up into the tree.
The tree right outside my living room window is an old brittle silver maple that has a couple of hollows in it where limbs have fallen off. There is a hollow I can see from this same living room couch that often has a squirrel family in it. This year there are two babies, and one of them is our local genotype of black squirrel. They are small, but fully formed. They venture out of the hole and around the tree, but haven't yet reached the ground that I have seen. The maple seeds haven't come yet - that is a major source of food for them.
I hope the owl doesn't get my babies. There are much more useful things for the owl to eat than my particular friends. Maybe since owls hunt at night and squirrels have no night vision and stay home at night they will never encounter each other.
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