Cheep, cheep, cheep!

I climbed up on the step stool this morning to have a look in the nest, I wanted to make sure everyone made it through yesterday's heat OK. There are four little beaks in there, not three, and they're all active and noisy. (That explains why both mom and dad are such frequent visitors to the nest - there are four little mouths to feed!) They don't even have their eyes open yet, but they're already getting feathers. It got very hot this afternoon, over 90 in the shade, and it's humid. I looked for and found one of my box fans, and got that set up out on the patio blowing air upward toward the nest. It did a good job this afternoon of dissipating the heat that builds up under the translucent patio roof. At one point I took a break from what I was doing and sat down to rest; I looked up at the nest and all 4 little heads were resting on the front rim of the nest, I think they were enjoying the breeze. Tomorrow's supposed to be about the same weather as today, I'll turn the fan on for them tomorrow, too. If it gets any hotter, I think I'll go out to the pole barn and get a metal crate pan; I can put that up on the roof over the nest and weight it down with a couple of rocks so it doesn't blow away, and that should shade the nest.