The real payoff to attracting birds into our yards with an offer of housing (either store-bought or hand-made) is the opportunity that this affords us to watch them settle in and pursue their family life right before our eyes. This spectacle is well worth the small effort we invest in luring birds with water and feeders and then setting up birdhouses in the hopes that they’ll stay.
The action typically begins in late winter or early spring, when male birds become proactive in their search for mates. A male may be defending territory that includes a few possible nest cavities, your birdhouse among them. You’ll sight him on occasion investigating your property and trying different places on for size. Some birds will bring a female along and try to interest her in various sites. It may take weeks before your birdhouse is chosen (and even then, birds occasionally change their minds). But when you see a female start to bring twigs, straw, and other nesting materials into the box, you’ll know that a new home for a mated pair has been settled upon.
The female does the majority of the work involved with nest building, usually during the morning hours. The male will guard the birdhouse while she’s away on her forays for suitable materials. One exception to this arrangement is the male house wren, which will begin several nests for the female and then let her complete the one that she prefers. Once the nest is finished, the birds will mate. The mother will usually begin laying her eggs within a few days, at a rate of one per day until her clutch is complete. Again, much of her labor occurs in the morning, and she and the male will keep away from the bird box at all times except for when she’s laying. She’ll begin incubating the eggs once the last one has been laid. At this point, she rarely rises from her sitting position except when she needs to get food or stretch. The males of some species will bring food to the birdhouse for the female during this time.
Newborn nestlings will hardly make any kind of noise or movement. Probably the only way you’ll be able to judge that they’ve hatched, aside from peeking into the bird house, is by watching how much more food the parents start bringing to the nest. The female continues to sit on her young, since they have few feathers and generate little body heat on their own. As they grow, they become much more vocal and insistent. Within several days their eyes are opened, and they make loud begging noises when they see their parents. Nestlings know, instinctively, when it’s time to leave the nest, and this usually occurs two to three weeks after their birth.
Even after they’ve left, however, many of these birds will still be dependent upon their parents for food. This is known as the fledgling stage, and it can last for several weeks. The parents typically indulge this behavior at first, and then eventually they will stop providing (and even become aggressive if their young don’t take the hint) once the fledglings have learned to find food for themselves. This is where the family life of the birdhouse officially ends, though the same mated pair may produce more young throughout the season – and may or may not choose to stay in your birdhouse in order to do so.
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