ugly babies...

There are little bits of egg shell on the bricks between the front step and flowerbeds/planters on either side of the door. This is what made me go get the step ladder and try to peep into the nest. The first ladder I got was too short, and even with a taller one, I could not get up high enough to see into the nest, so the photo are with me standing there holding my phone over the nest and not really knowing what I was taking a picture of until after the fact.

... hatching out in the nest by my front door. This tidy little home was begun last summer, and much to my surprise: being used again. It was so interesting/confounding/fascinating in location and construction that I could not make myself take it down to dispose of it after the family matured and departed last year. So it just sat there over the winter, and is home to another generation of homely, scrawny, floppy naked birds. Man - baby birds are so ugly, only a mother could tolerate!

I do not know what kind they are. I've seen the mother, or maybe dad, who has given me the benefit of her raucous opinion on several occasions. I was recently out near the nest, using my broom to knock down cobwebs that were around the door and windows. There was a brownish colored bird sitting on a limb of the crepe myrtle at the corner of the house, making lots of twit-twit sounds. A steady commentary, giving me the benefit of her unsolicited belief that the person waving the broom was 'way too close to her nest/family.

I am assuming/guessing she is the one who built that nest last spring, carefully constructed as you can see, cushioned with tiny bits of grass and moss. Precariously perched on the top of a clear glass sphere that is the globe/cover for the light adjacent to the front door. It appears to be glued in place, surprisingly securely, with bits of mud -amazing how the knowledge to construct and adhere was in the bird's brain before it hatched and reproduced. How can you possibly think that due to evolution?