New Arrivals
- adutra923
- Jun 19, 2017
- 2 min read

Big things have begun to happen on the refuge. Finally after much anticipation the eggs have begun to hatch! With these new arrivals, my internship has a whole new set off responsibilities. From now on I am responsible for tracking the chicks through the different cycles of life. For instance they go from hatchling to nestling to fledgling. During these different stages I am in charge of monitoring not only the developmental aspects but I am also supposed to track and record about how long each stage occurs and then guess when the chicks will leave the nest. Since last week, a lot has happened with our swallow families. Currently all three have eggs. Our newest family laid their first egg earlier in the week, and the other two have five eggs. In addition to new eggs, two swallow chicks hatched. I strongly believe that the first one hatched early yesterday morning and the other one hatched today. If my predictions are true then it took approximately fourteen days of incubation before the swallows hatched, and within the next three or four days the rest should hatch. In addition to the swallows, the house wren families have also started to grow. Late last week I noticed that the eggs were hard to see in one of the boxes and I had assumed that they had been eaten or destroyed. But when I went earlier this week and checked I realized that the eggs hadn’t been destroyed but had hatched instead! Out of the seven eggs I was able to count about six chicks which mean that one could have been a dud. So far these chicks have left the hatchling stage and are starting to become nestlings. With this stage they have began to form a light down and are starting to open their eyes. These chicks will be entering the fledgling stage within the next two weeks. Additionally we have one wren nest currently under construction and a third with seven eggs inside. With all these new chicks, I am excited to monitor the different stages of development and hopefully gain some more insight into the breeding patterns of these beautiful song birds.
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