Guests in our garden

One day I was sitting in our garden and was wondering why there was a bird flying to and from the only tree in our garden all the time .... When we checked we found a nest. A couple of days later the bird was sitting in it ...

And when she went out for food we could actually get a glimpse of what she was sitting on ...


The evening before we went on our vacation we saw that two birds had hatched.


The next morning the other two had hatched, too. (Sorry, the photos are not the best. But it's not easy to take a picture in the middle of a dark tree without a flash ...)

My daughter was very excited to follow all this ... and we were hoping that the birds would not learn to fly and be gone within the week that we would be away. When we came back from the holidays first thing was to check the nest. It was empty! We were a bit sad, since we really had hoped that we would see the little birds - maybe even see how they learn to fly. But obviously they were gone.

The next day (we had returned the day before in the evening) we were sitting in our living room and looking out into the garden we saw this:
The mom and dad bird were looking for food and the little ones were hopping around in the grass and following them and trying to get the best bits. It was so cute! So they were not gone completely. They just did not use the nest anymore.