The Cycle

The cycle

Six biological phases. Round two begins at the first. Each block lights up when its trigger fires.

1. Phase 1

   Nest-building

   May 29 → Jun 1

   Female pressing material into the rim of the wall sconce. Male tracking, courtship-feeding at the cup. Cup read as finished on Day 4 (2026-06-01).

2. Phase 2

   Laying

   Jun 2 → Jun 6

   First egg confirmed in cup at 09:06 PT 2026-06-02 (Day 5). One egg per morning; clutch complete at 5 eggs on 2026-06-06 (Day 9).

3. Phase 3

   Incubation

   Jun 7 → Jun 17

   Female-only. Began Day 10 (2026-06-07) on the complete 5-egg clutch — delayed onset for a synchronous hatch. Ran 11 days; the female brooded tight through the final night (Jun 16→17) and the first chick was out by dawn on the 17th — a few days ahead of the marked June 19–21 window.

4. Phase 4

   Hatching

   Jun 17 → Jun 18

   Began before dawn on Day 20 (2026-06-17). The full five-egg clutch was intact at 01:18 PT; the first hatchling was out by 04:45 PT (four eggs + one chick, confirmed from the top-down camera). The rest of the clutch followed through the day; by Day 21 all five had hatched — a brood of five, confirmed by eye. Synchronous hatch on a 5-egg clutch, a few days ahead of the marked June 19–21 window. (Note: the classifier's wide-frame egg counts undercounted the occluded cup.)

5. Phase 5

   Brooding → Provisioning

   Jun 19 → Jul 1

   Five eggs hatched Jun 17–18 (Days 20–21). One nestling was lost on Jun 22 — worked out of the cup and ejected from the nest — leaving four; cause undetermined. The four nestlings passed the brooding→provisioning crossover (days 7–9 post-hatch) in the last week of June: the female now broods only intermittently and both adults provision at pace. By Jul 1 (~14 days post-hatch) the chicks are feathered and near-fledging — inside the 11–19-day fledge window. A five-day capture outage (Jun 27–30) fell across this stretch, so the late-brooding data has a gap; footage resumed Jul 1.

6. Phase 6 · current

   Fledging

   Jul 2 → Jul 5

   Complete. All four fledged on the morning of Jul 5 (Day 38, 18 days post-hatch) — one at a time across the eight-o'clock hour, the automated head-count falling four → three → two → one. The last fledgling sat on the rim of the cup until ~08:57 and left in the 08:59–09:00 window (08:59:27 was the last clip with a bird); interval coverage across the transition was gap-free. The cup was empty from ~09:00 PT through the afternoon, with no bird in any clip pulled (a possible dusk roost-return is not yet observed). Eighteen days post-hatch is the top of the 11–19-day range and matches round one at this same sconce exactly. Round two set out to film the front of the cycle round one missed and ended up catching both ends — the hatch (Jun 17) and the fledge (Jul 5) on the same camera. Second broods in the same nest are common; watch for a reuse.