In follow up to Birds Day, More Bird News, and Even More Bird News, the 11 chicks secretly hatched in the feed tub are doing well.  They are starting to develop more colors and patterns.  Only one so far is obviously a rooster.

The light yellow chicks are doing quite well with their mother and are starting to feather out.  It is hard to get a photo of them as she is quite protective.

The white and yellow Araucana hen that was sitting on the nest under the feeder turned out to be a lousy mother.  She would hatch chicks and not take care of them, focusing instead on the unhatched eggs.  Several chicks died like this despite the food and water I was giving them just because she would not keep them warm.  So I gave up and threw away the remaining eggs so more chicks would go through a horrible death.  I am thinking that these light yellow chicks were probably from her, and this hen kindly adopted them and is taking great care of them.

The one of our many barn swallow nests that I took a photo of before now has two swallow chicks almost ready to fly.  I found one dead chick under the nest and do not know what became of the other two.  Hopefully they already flew away and are doing well.

The one of many nest boxes has cute swallow chicks poking their heads out.  

This particular nest box came from my grandfather and is on the feed shed wall right by the door.  So I get to check them out every day.

So that is the bird news.  We have way more wild birds this year than ever before.  It has been fun watching and hearing them this spring.