The Chicks Have Fledged!

They are out of the nest for the first time today. Check them out, this is chick #1 at a little over three weeks old:



He is the most adventurous chick, as well as the biggest. I still think he will be yellow. You can see a yellow cast to his feathers. He may end up being a pastel yellow. I'm calling them all boys but really I won't have any idea what they are until they get their adult feathers. You can still see the glow in the dark nodes on the sides of his beak.

Here are his brothers:



They are both a bit smaller and a bit more shy. They are sort of hiding out in the corner of the bottom of the cage. It will be interesting to see if any of them will be able to find their way back to the nest tonight or if I will have to pick them up and put them in it. They will still sleep in the nest for the next couple of weeks but will spend more and more time out and about as they get older.

I think chick #2 has a good chance of being a pastel yellow or a silver. Chick #3 pretty much looks like a normal green back at this point.

Since the babies have fledged and are out of the nest, there has been great interest in the two nests in general. I saw Rowena in the babies nest checking it out this morning. Godric is not defending it anymore. And I saw several of the other birds hopping in and out of the other nest as well. The progress of the babies seems to have gotten the whole flock thinking about nesting.

Some of the birds have also been spending part of their time on the lower perches, seemingly in sympathy with the babies sitting on the bottom. I think they are trying to encourage the youngsters to join them on the perches. The babies are not great flyers or perchers yet. They need a bit of time to figure out what their wings and feet can do.

I hope they figure it out soon. It's a bit upsetting seeing them on the floor of the cage. Normally only a sick birdie would sit down there. Fledging and consequently, weaning is a fairly vulnerable time for the youngsters. I hope they all make it through safely!

In knitting news: I went out of town for the weekend. I brought my knitting but only got a few inches of sock done. I'm hoping to finish up the two pairs of socks I have on the needles right now but I'm starting to burn out on sock knitting - it's all I've been doing for at least the past month. What I REALLY want to do is...Log Cabin Knitting. Yep, I too have been bitten by the Mason Dixon bug. As soon as I got my book a few weeks ago & saw those Log Cabin blankets my brain lit up like the Fourth of July. Colors! Shapes! The simple beauty of it all. I've got the Log Cabin Fever BAD and I haven't knitted one stitch! But I did get my (admittedly massive) shipment of Endless Summer Collection Sonata from Elann. Tons of colors and supposedly you can machine wash it. Plus - you can't beat $2 yarn. I got the boxes (yep that's plural - as in so much yarn there's more than one box) yesterday but haven't opened them yet because I know that when I do it's going to be Log Cabin mania around here. I have to plan for the take over of my brain carefully. I've got to clear away the other knitting, get my needles and other implements together, and warn my family that they will be expected to eat sandwiches for dinner for the foreseeable future - then I can open the boxes. :)

Here are some Log Cabin Blankets which have inspired me. I'm sure you have seen Cara's Rhapsody in Green (as I call it) Log Cabin squares. And here's Nona's Super Hip Retro Freeform Log Cabin. I told her I thought it looked like something Samantha's evil twin cousin Serena would have twitched up on Bewitched in order to hypnotize Darren.