June 26: This was the day that we noticed the nest being built on top of the light in our front entry way. Our first thought was a swallow because we have a lot of them flying around our neighbourhood though most would have nested weeks earlier.

June 28: We noticed a bird sitting on the nest so I got out my camera and we discovered a Pacific-slope Flycatcher (whose 4-letter species ID is PSFL) sitting on the nest. Here is the picture that I took:

Consulting with Birds of North America Online (BNA-online) I discovered that first broods occur in April or May but some pairs will attempt a second nest around June or July. This was clearly round 2 for these birds.

June 30: I got up on a step-stool, held my iPhone 4s above the nest and took a picture:

The PSFL was sitting on 3 eggs. Consulting BNA-online again I found out that the most common number of eggs is 4 followed by 3 so we might have a full nest or there may be more to come.

July 2: Only 2 days after the first picture, I took a second and discovered that there were still 3 eggs.

July 5: Another 3 days and there were still only 3 eggs to the bird sitting on the nest was probably incubating the eggs. BNA-online indicated typical incubation periods of 13 to 16 days so, assuming that my first ‘egg picture’ indicated the start of incubation then we should expect the eggs to hatch between July 12 and 15.

July 11: A picture from my iPhone shows that the eggs have hatched:

The three ‘grubs’ in the nest look pretty helpless so they must have hatched quite recently.  I decided to call July 11 hatch-day 0.

Here is my first video of the adults coming and going, bringing food to the nestlings.

There will be many more videos and pictures to come as the nestlings grow up and fledge. I just hope that they all make it to fly away risking the odds of survival which are not in their favour — I’ve heard that only about one in ten birds survive a year after hatching.