Rewilding My Lot

After a Barn Swallow nest was constructed in our porch and later abandoned, it was taken over by House Finches.

I have a mirror on a stick that I can use to look into the nest any time mom is not sitting in it, and if I want to take a photograph then I briefly move a ladder into the porch to do that.

Five eggs were laid sometime before June 16, 2025.

Five eggs were still present on June 24.

Four eggs were visible on June 25. I presumed there was a hatched chick in the nest, too, but I couldn’t see clearly enough from the ground using my mirror.

On June 26 I climbed up to get a closer view and a photograph. There were two eggs and three tiny naked chicks. My guess is that the one on the right is the most newly hatched — it seems to be the smallest and most naked.

On June 27 there were four chicks and one egg. One of the chicks was more active than the others.

On June 28, there was still one unhatched egg, so I wondered if it was a dud.

However, on June 29 I couldn’t see any eggs in the nest. It’s hard to count the chicks when they’re all jumbled together like this, so mostly I’m going by the lack of eggs to deduce that there are five. Presumably in a few days they’ll be easier to tell apart. The nestling period for House Finches is only 12-19 days so things should develop pretty quickly from this point!

After each chick hatched, I saw no sign of eggshells, in or out of the nest. Most likely they were eaten by the mother — nature’s recycling!