That’s right, even with their weird bloated-shut eyes and fuzzy lint-ball bodies, baby cardinals are still cute. We noticed the nest last Friday during a particularly ribald round of Yahtzee! on the porch (sorry, no details). It’s tucked behind a grape-vine trellis just outside one of the screened windows.

The mama came out and squeaked for a while but I squawked back and she left us alone. When I went over to inspect (it is, after all, my house, not theirs), I found a little mound of speckled eggs. Looked more like pebbles, actually.

This morning on my way out the door I glanced over and saw one lone orange beak, no bigger than your pinky fingernail, pointing straight up. Wide open. In my head I could just hear it saying ‘Mommy…throw up some more food into my mouth.’ And then I kind of felt disgusted but in a warm, sunshiny way.

As I got closer two more beaks popped up, and then I saw the dad glaring at me from beneath the rubharb patch. Man, he was a good looking dude. With that pompadour and his feathers red as embers. If he were a few feet taller, I’d have been a little intimidated.

I’ll post some pictures if I get a chance this evening. Maybe I can even catch them feeding the babies. Now who wouldn’t want to see that?

Yahtzeee!!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 8:57 am and is filed under Home-ownership, Minnesota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.