Good morning Cafè. Coffee is ready.
The Phoebe pair built a second nest on the opposite side of my roof overhang after the first brood hatched. The second brood hatched a while ago. Three chicks. After the heavy thunderstorm we had 4 days ago, I found a wet dead chick on my deck step, right under the nest. It wasn't fully feathered at all. Too young to be leaving the nest.
Mom and Dad kept tending the remaining chicks, or so I thought. Two days later (Monday evening) I found a live second chick in my flower pot on the deck step. I put it back in the nest. I wasn't thinking about the, 'why are these chicks leaving the nest too early?'
When I got home from work yesterday the chick was on the floor mat right in front of the deck stairs. This time I tucked it under a low to the ground shrub, then looked in the nest. From the looks of its level of feathering, the third chick had died the day I found the dead chick on my step.
Later I kept feeling the hairs on my arms move and found the teeniest, tiniest little mites crawling on me. So I think that is what killed the chick and the other two were trying to get out of the nest because they were getting or were already infested. Maybe the parents are infested? I wish I had known that when I had that little fledgling. I would have put a little poultry dust on it before sending it on its way hoping it would give it a better chance. As it is I don't think it will make it.