Blessed is the 'bird' whose quiver is full

Sunday morning before heading off to work I decided to see if the mama bluebird had laid any more eggs. The house is just a bit above my head so I climb on a stool to look inside. I carefully opened the front of the house and guess who was sitting on the nest staring up at me?

The poor thing was shocked and so was I. I kept very still and quickly closed the front of the house and walked quietly away. I didn't know if she had started incubating the four eggs or if she was in the process of laying a fifth. But when I returned home after work, this is what I found:



I decided I'd spend some time today trying to get some shots of the parents-to-be sitting on their house. My brilliant idea was to hang an old (bright blue) blanket on my clothesline and hide behind it...then pop up quickly once the birds landed. My plan didn't work out very well. Those birds knew I was there the whole time. Darn birds!

This is the male telling me to get lost:



He was rather insistant:



Since my bright blue 'blind' wasn't doing the trick, I moved a bit further away and they finally flew down and sat on the house:



The mama went inside and the male hung on the outside. In this picture he was just about to take off:



I'm pretty disappointed with this new camera. I got it because it has a zoom lens but the pictures are blurry and grainy when zooming. I don't know if it's because I don't know what I'm doing (which is likely) or if the camera is just not very good.