Backyard bird fledglings

Baby bird time is always an exciting time, and I've been lucky in that I've been able to get some extended observations of adorable fledglings living in my backyard. Cute "teenage" birds, still begging for food from their parents, dressed in almost-but-not-quite adult feathers, pretty good flyers but not perfect yet.

This is an adult mockingbird.

And this is a mockingbird child. A fledgling, looking like an adult, but not there yet! "Fledge is the stage in a young bird's life when the feathers and wing muscles are sufficiently developed for flight." You can see the child has a pale beak in contrast to the adult's black, and dark speckling on the chest.

You can see here that the fledlings can still look very fluffy!

Another great thing about these little fluffs is that they're very curious - this one turned to look at me very intensely! The adults might look at you with wary, sharp caution and judgment (when they're not pointedly ignoring you), while the children are more likely to look at you with open curiosity or confusion, and if you start getting too close, a more obvious nervousness the adults won't show.

Still watching.

Blue jays are raising their children.You can see one of those parents here:

Beautiful iridescent blue

While the mockingbirds feel comfortable in the front yard, the Blue Jays keep most of their operations to the back yard. As such, they're often a little further away, and photographing their children is a little trickier.

It's a blurry little fuzzball!

 You can see again that these kids have pale beaks, too, and though they've got adult colors and patterning, it's still all fuzzy and dull. The kids will often stay in more or less the same place while their parents are out finding food for them, which makes them easy to watch. They're also usually very vocal, making a lot of high-pitch begging calls that sound something like a creaky gate. I can often hear these calls even when I'm inside the house.

And here the adult comes in with some sort of food! Hooray.

I see the adults foraging a lot. Not sure what they're picking up, though.

It's actually been two weeks since I took these photos, and these children are now looking much more like their parents, with shiny adult feather patterns and colors. But they're still following their parents around, learning about the world and occasionally begging for food. It's been really fun to watch my feathered neighbors raising their families this year.