finch photographs by Roberta Stacy

House finches that visit my back yard are the subjects of most of these pictures. In late April of 2002, a female house finch began building a nest in a bird feeder that hangs less than six feet from my back door. She laid her first egg on April 30th and continued to lay one egg a day for the next five days. The first egg hatched on May 14th, and by May 18th there were five chicks and no visible eggs in the nest. It wasn't until May 29th, the day after the first three chicks flew away, that I saw the partially hatched sixth egg. It had been under the chicks. The last two chicks left on May 30th, just after dawn.