flyaway : photos : Baby Chickadees Photo Journal

Welcome to the popular Baby Chickadees photojournal, where you'll follow the amazing day-by-day growth and development of seven baby chickadees from the parents' nest building to the day the nestlings fledged into the wide world.

These Carolina Chickadees nested in one of my bluebird boxes in the spring of 2004.

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flyaway > Follow the amazing development of seven baby chickadees!

If you have a chickadee family in your nestbox, you can use this journal to learn about how your babies are developing, and estimate how old they are by comparing them to the developing chicks in this album.

flyaway > Bluebird Box 2
This is the nestbox being used by the Carolina Chickadees this year.

flyaway > April 16: The nest is nearly complete. Both chickadee parents work to line their nest with a thick layer of soft moss. Then they add a top layer of very soft plant fibers and downy feathers to cradle the eggs and then the developing chicks.

flyaway > April 21: A view of the completed nest, constructed of a thick cushion of moss and then a fluffy soft layer of plant fibers, down and feathers on top.

There are 6 eggs in the nest, shown in the next photo.

flyaway > April 21: We found six eggs in the nest today.

flyaway > April 28: One more egg was laid after our last visit. This is the complete clutch of 7 eggs. Inside each one the white albumen is becoming a baby chickadee, with the yolk providing nourishment to the developing fetus.

flyaway > May 4, Day 0 - BirthDay:

Five chicks have hatched -- some just in the past hour or so. The sixth eggshell is cracked but the chick has not yet emerged. The seventh egg - the last one laid - is still unbroken. The hatchlings are exhausted from the strenuous job of breaking out of their shells, and just flop down fast asleep wherever they are. While they rest, the parents carry away all the broken shell fragments to keep the nest soft, clean and safe.

The eyes look enormous in the tiny heads because songbirds' eyes start out at full adult size, and the hatchlings gradually grow into them. But they're still undeveloped, and won't open for a week. Their ears are also still sealed - the ear-holes will open in a few days.

You can see the yolk of the egg in the abdomen of the chick closest to the bottom of the photo. The yolk nourishes the embryo during development. Shortly before hatching, the yolk sac withdraws into the abdomen to continue providing nourishment for the first few days of life. Once it has fully retracted, the navel closes and heals, and the chick is ready to hatch.

flyaway > May 5, Day 1: The sixth chick has emerged, and all six are squirming. The hatchlings' skin is still translucent; you can see veins and large muscles through it. Their eyes are still closed -- they'll open in about a week.

Any stimulus makes the chicks gape. The sight of that huge mouth - as wide as the chick's entire head - stimulates the parents to put food into it.

The seventh egg has still not hatched. I hope the chick is all right.

flyaway > May 5, Day 1: For scale, the entire nest is only about five inches wide, and the edges don't even appear in this photo. It's hard to imagine how tiny the day-old hatchlings are. They're entire bodies are only 3/4" inch long, and their wings are about the same diameter as paper-clip wire.

Follow the amazing development of seven baby chickadees!

If you have a chickadee family in your nestbox, you can use this journal to learn about how your babies are developing, and estimate how old they are by comparing them to the developing chicks in this album.