I checked on the house finch nest this morning. That would make about 15 days since we first found the nest. The eggs are not hatched, but it looks like they’re being moved regularly. I think it’s still possible there may be baby finches soon, although the typical incubation time is around 14 days. And I haven’t seen the female in about a week.
What do you think? Hatch or no hatch?
The story so far on the house finch family is that the eggs are intact. We still don’t know when they might hatch. The video from yesterday shows what the birds typically do and I think it would be redundant to make videos daily. The critter cam captured over 400 video and image files in the space of almost 5 hours yesterday. The short YouTube was produced from a tiny fraction of those.
Their behavior doesn’t change from day to day. I’ll be checking the nest once a day to check on the eggs, which will cut down on the number of intrusive visits that only startle the birds.
One thought I had was about bird flu which is in the news a lot lately. The CDC web site on Avian Influenza A makes it clear that water fowl are the main wild bird transmitters, not the typical back yard songbirds.
Another thing I found was a new edition of Iowa bird expert Stan Tekiela’s book, Birds of Iowa Field Guide (new edition 2023, last one was in 2000). I think it’s a great guide, partly because it helps readers to identify bird species starting with a very simple feature—their color. The image below shows the old edition on the left and the new one on the right.
One new item about the house finch is that, rarely, males who are not well-nourished might have a yellow rather than orange or red head, chest, and rump. Another is that both males and females can get a disease that causes the eyes to crust over, leading to blindness and death.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 