A couple  months ago, Anthony and Bob built a birdhouse.  I don’t think I wrote a post about it, I meant to.  It was quite the ordeal.  Anthony wanted to build a “play house” out of old scraps and asked for help.  I volunteered his dad.  But Bob is entirely too practical without a lot of wild imagination and shot down his plans.  The flimsy “frame” wasn’t “practical.”  Well..duh.  It wasn’t supposed to be.  Anthony just wanted to build something with a hammer and I made the mistake of asking his dad to help.

Well…that little fiasco actually resulted in something pretty cool.  Practical dad went online and found some plans for a birdhouse.  They went together to the lumber yard, got some supplies and worked together in building this little house.  Bob even let Anthony do most of the building (which is a big deal).

Anthony’s dream of building something came true and they ended up having a nice father and son construction experience {insert Tim Allen “Home Improvement” manly laughing here}.

We hung the birdhouse in a big tree out by the kids’ playground and waited.

One day we noticed some straw-like material hanging out of the opening.  We were hopeful that someone was moving in.  We checked it every day but didn’t see a lot of activity.  Several weeks went past.

Then one day we were outside playing and we noticed a little brown bird going in and out and hanging around.  We were so excited!  We thought someone finally moved in and Anthony was thrilled!

Me and Bob sat outside with the boys playing one afternoon.  We watched.  We then realized that we actually had a family living in our birdhouse.  Bob snapped a few pictures and went online to discover that we had a Sparrow Family.

And we had babies!

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These are pictures of the daddy Sparrow taking bugs into the nest.  If you look close, you can see a bug hanging out of his  mouth.  He will go in and then you hear all the babies chirping.  It’s the neatest thing!!  Usually we can watch the mom and dad alternate bringing in bugs for the babies all afternoon.  They are just like human babies and seem to eat a LOT.

Bob took Anthony out to get a bird feeder but so far we haven’t seen them use it.  We want to offer them mealworms or something but aren’t sure where to put them so that they can get them.  They will not come down to the ground near us and tend to hang out on the branches above the birdhouse.

It’s been very cool for the boys.  They love to sit there with us and watch them fly in and out.  It’s fun to see how mommy and daddy Sparrow care for the babies together.  It’s been a great learning experience.

I never thought in my old age (ha) that I would turn into a bird watcher…but I’m starting to see why it’s so interesting.