  We calculate the nucleon and the delta mass to fourth order in a covariant
formulation of the small scale expansion. We analyze lattice data from the MILC
collaboration and demonstrate that the available lattice data combined with our
knowledge of the physical values for the nucleon and delta masses lead to
consistent chiral extrapolation functions for both observables up to fairly
large pion masses. This holds in particular for very recent data on the delta
mass from the QCDSF collaboration. The resulting pion-nucleon sigma term is
sigma_{piN} = 48.9 MeV. This first quantitative analysis of the quark-mass
dependence of the structure of the Delta(1232) in full QCD within chiral
effective field theory suggests that (the real part of) the nucleon-delta
mass-splitting in the chiral limit, Delta_0 = 0.33 GeV, is slightly larger than
at the physical point. Further analysis of simultaneous fits to nucleon and
delta lattice data are needed for a precision determination of the properties
of the first excited state of the nucleon.
