Who Goes There?

Last year I installed an old metal farm gate onto a pair of nice big heavy posts. I installed it so the gate could be opened but it remains closed and is more for aesthetics, as a back drop to one of our flower gardens.

Once the gate was installed I hung a 3-holed bird house on one of the posts in the hope of attracting an exotic type of bird in the spring. Well as luck would have, and out of all the possible bird species in our area, we got a pair of your basic, run of the mill, House Sparrows. They moved into the top nest - the penthouse to boot.

This pair raised two separate broods of eggs/chicks this spring. The picture above shows 2 of the chicks, from the second brood, peering out and investigating. These little guys were extremely noisy and got even louder when the parents would return with a tasty morsel. The chicks would peek out like in the picture but when you approached them they'd pull back inside - similar to a coo-coo clock.

They're gone now, all grown up - literally flown the coop. The vacancy signs have been hung, so we'll just have to wait and see who moves in next spring.

The story behind how we acquired this gate is pretty comical in an of itself and one of these day's I just might tell it here...Ooh I bet the suspense is killing you!