By Jeremy Varner
This spring our family got to see the early life cycle of a house-finch family from new eggs to empty nest.
House finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) are a very common backyard bird in Georgia. They are small, about six inches long, and streaky brown. The males have a reddish or purplish head and chest; they sort of look like a high-school rocker who dyed his hair magenta but hasn’t reapplied the color and his roots are showing. House finches roam around in small flocks of a few to a couple handfuls and like to talk to each other. They are year-round residents that love seeds, so you are almost guaranteed to see them if you have a bird feeder with a basic seed mix.
This year, a finch couple decided to build a nest in one of the ferns hanging on our porch. I was taken by surprise the morning of April 24 when a bird flew out of the fern while I was watering it. A closer inspection revealed a small cup nest made of grass and other vegetation, and a pair of pale-blue eggs. Momma and Daddy Finch perched on the power line and chirped, “Baby on board!” the whole time. A few days later two more eggs were incubating. So began our #SpringNestWatch2K25.
By May 9, the eggs hatched, and the nest held the smallest, fuzziest aliens you ever did see. They looked more like a pile of caterpillars than birds. On May 16, following a week of growth, they started looking like real birds. Unfortunately, what started out as a tidy nest was now covered in poop. Changing (human) dirty diapers was not fun, but imagine living in one room without a toilet or trash can and you just have to let your baby poop along the baseboard.
Of the four original eggs, there were three teenagers in the nest by May 21. They were mad about having their picture taken. Mad about not being able to leave the house (but they would have been mad at running errands with their parents, too). Mad about all their siblings’ (and their own) poop piling up in their faces. Maybe mad about a few other things. It’s hard to carry so many big feelings when you have such a small body and can’t fly yet.
Given their development, I didn’t think we would see them around much longer. We got one last check on May 24. I peeked inside while gently watering the ferns and the birds said, “Enough of this, old man!” They then burst out of the nest, flew across the yard, flew over the street, and landed agilely on our neighbor’s roof, where their parents were patiently waiting for them. Given the calmness of the parents I think they had been wanting to get the kids out of the house for a while. They seemed to appreciate the outside influence and motivation to spread their own wings.
They haven’t been back to the nest, and I haven’t seen any piles of feathers around the yard, so I believe they are out there living their best lives. It’s what every empty-nest parent wants to be true.
