My baby birds are dead. It got very hot here yesterday, 95 degrees in the shade. Under my covered patio, it was even warmer. The "roof" of the patio is make of green corugated fiberglas-reinforced panels; they're translucent and let the light in. The nest is only a couple of inches below the roofing. I think it got so hot up there either yesterday or Saturday that it killed the babies. I didn't see or hear any activity from the nest yesterday, and haven't seen mom and dad since Saturday, so I think the babies are gone and the parents have abandoned the nest. I was beginning to think the Kingbird babies were dead, anyway - one baby was quite a big larger than the others, and when I climbed up on the step-stool to have a peek on Friday I could only see the big baby. I'm guessing he was from an egg that a bird other than the Kingbirds laid in the nest. Since there are so many Brown-Headed Cowbirds around, and since they're notorious for nest parasitism (http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/manbook/nestpara.htm), I'm guessing the bigger baby - the one in the picture below - was a Brown-Headed Cowbird.
I'm going to wait another 24 hours, and if I still don't see/hear anything from the nest, or see the parent birds, I'll take the nest down. I'm sad about the baby Kingbirds, but not so sad about the baby Cowbird. Cowbirds are really not nice, they lay their eggs in everybody else's nest and are often the only babies that survive, while the babies of the birds who built the nest starve to death.
I hope the Kingbirds have time to start over, in a better location.
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