Monday night was a scary one, as the mother bluebird just didn't come into the house at all. It seemed she might be gone for good. There is advice about how to deal with abandoned nestlings available online but some of it is conflicting. But one commentator said that after about eight days, the babies have enough feathers so that the mother doesn't need to keep them warm all night any longer. Sure enough, in the morning she returned.
And one of the things that was there waiting for her (see first picture here) was a "fecal sac," which is essentially a poop diaper for baby bluebirds. I was wondering if there were big horrible messes down in "the cup" of the nest, but I had seen both the mother and the father carry out little white blobs a few times. Turns out that this is the mode of sanitation in bluebird societies. The babies' waste is contained pretty neatly, and the parents come in and collect it and carry it away so that whatever smell it might have will not be detected by predators. I was fortunate to catch this picture because the parents are usually pretty quick in their detection and disposal of the sacs (which are a combination of all of the waste products of each individual baby).
The other pics are just some weird poses that help to show: 1) how far they are stretching to have their own space (?), 2) how much their feathers are developing, and 3) the sparkly blue fuzz on their heads that will turn into feathers soon.
Bluebird Diaper
Blue Fuzz Star
Sparkly Blue Fuzz
Feather Mass
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