There is something cute and hopeful about a baby – and not just a human baby.

In the last few weeks, people throughout Maine have been reporting baby birds, just out of the nest and still being fed by their parents.

Despite bad weather, cats, natural predators, pesticides, and a variety of other risk factors, the fact that there are birds that succeed in raising young gives us hope for the future.

We wrote earlier about the pair of black-capped chickadees that nested in our backyard. They kept an eye on, and fiercely scolded, the “snake” that was really our garden hose.

You’ll be glad to know that the young chickadees fledged from the nest and have been frequently seen around our yard and neighborhood as they continue to be fed by the parents and learn how to forage on their own.

Last week a male hairy woodpecker brought its recently-out-of-the-nest youngster to our feeder and gave it a few mouthfuls of suet.

It was fascinating to watch the young bird as he perched on a nearby telephone pole and curiously poked at various metal screws and fittings on the structure, trying to learn what was food and what was not.

The period after the young leave the nest (fledge) is quite interesting and often historically overlooked even by ornithologists. And who can blame them?

It’s easy to think the nesting period itself more enthralling: the building of a new structure to hold the often beautifully colored eggs that hatch into often helpless, often featherless nestlings (there are a few birds that are fully-feathered at hatching and can immediately feed on their own). Changes after hatching are dramatic and easy to track.

In small birds like warblers and sparrows, the nestlings are in the nest for a remarkably short time, often only about 10 or 12 days, sometimes even less. They leave the nest before they can really fly, often able to just get enough lift to make it up onto a branch a few feet above them.

It is a period of intense learning, and it’s fortunate that the summer days are long so they can, in just a few weeks, gain the skills they’ll need to survive.

For songbirds that raise more than one brood of young per year, it is the male parent that will continue to feed the young after they leave the nest, as the female incubates the new set of eggs.

For those that have only a single nest each year, both will feed them. The young follow the adults around as best they can as they get better and better at flight and presumably learn by watching as the adults capture juicy caterpillars and other insects for them.

We have been enamored this year by a very industrious female house sparrow. Occasionally one of the chickadee parents as well who have picked the outside of our house clean of spiders to feed their young, even investigating under eaves and in likely crevices.

Who knows whether that will be a skill that will be passed on to the youngsters!

Larger bids like ospreys, bald eagles, other hawks and owls, as well as gulls and terns take much longer both to get to sufficient size to leave the nest but also much longer to learn the fine art of how to procure their food.

Even in late summer or early fall it is not uncommon to see an all-brown juvenile gull begging and begging its beleaguered parent for food.

Getting that kid to leave home and get out on their own clearly is not a problem that only humans sometimes have to deal with!

Dr. Jeff Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative. During his time at the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology and as the Audubon Society's national bird conservation director, Dr. Wells earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. Jeff's grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, also formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a widely published natural history writer and a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Together, they have been writing and teaching people about birds for decades. The Maine natives are authors of the highly acclaimed book, “Maine's Favorite Birds.”