Video of Eastern Phoebe Fledging from Nest

Eastern Phoebes take 18 days to fledge from their nest so I was excited today at the prospect of catching the event on our nest cam at work. The eggs hatched on June 27 so today was the 18th day. Time to fledge from the nest. The birds were still there in the morning so I started recording the live feed. I checked back half and hour later and they were gone. It looks like one bird was thinking about leaving and then fell out. It quickly flew back but bumped another bird out. Once that bird left everyone followed. It was over in a matter of seconds. Kind of fun to watch. This was the third nest attempt this year by this pair of phoebes. The first nest had all the eggs destroyed by cowbirds. The second attempt was a nest full of cowbird eggs and then finally on the third try the cowbirds left them alone and they successfully raised five new phoebes.




~Kirk