Look! A bird!

[Thursday's_Child]

Discovered a nest in our garage [!] yesterday. No idea how/when it got there without us noticing any activity.

Initially assumed it belonged to some kind of rodent because there's a small gap at the bottom of the garage door where the slab settled.  Upon donning a mask and taking it down, I saw four small, speckled eggs inside. Put it back. 

Probably belongs to a(n invasive) house sparrow, but could also be a Carolina wren or something.  Didn't get a great look.  Have never seen Mom on the nest.  Don't know if the eggs are viable, but I'll assume so until I figure out otherwise.  I just hope Mom is cool with our presence; given that we didn't notice any of the nest-building or egg-laying activity, she must be pretty stealthy, but that could change once she starts incubating/tending to babies. 

Fingers crossed all goes well.  Hoping the fledglings will be able to find their way out.  May need to leave the garage door open for a while once the hatchlings are at that stage.

It could well be a Carolina wren - they are likely to find that gap and explore it.  I've learned not to leave the patio sliding door slightly gapped open for ventilation unless I'm around, b/c they'll come in - and I have cats!

In other news, my Carolina wrens fledged yesterday afternoon.

[nebo113]

Discovered a nest in our garage [!] yesterday. No idea how/when it got there without us noticing any activity.

Initially assumed it belonged to some kind of rodent because there's a small gap at the bottom of the garage door where the slab settled.  Upon donning a mask and taking it down, I saw four small, speckled eggs inside. Put it back. 

Probably belongs to a(n invasive) house sparrow, but could also be a Carolina wren or something.  Didn't get a great look.  Have never seen Mom on the nest.  Don't know if the eggs are viable, but I'll assume so until I figure out otherwise.  I just hope Mom is cool with our presence; given that we didn't notice any of the nest-building or egg-laying activity, she must be pretty stealthy, but that could change once she starts incubating/tending to babies. 

Fingers crossed all goes well.  Hoping the fledglings will be able to find their way out.  May need to leave the garage door open for a while once the hatchlings are at that stage.

It could well be a Carolina wren - they are likely to find that gap and explore it.  I've learned not to leave the patio sliding door slightly gapped open for ventilation unless I'm around, b/c they'll come in - and I have cats!

In other news, my Carolina wrens fledged yesterday afternoon.

They love potted plants!!!  Unfortunately.

[cathwen]

Yesterday while my husband and I were driving home, a glorious bald eagle soared overhead.  I couldn't help but gasp.  It's been a while since I've seen one! 

[apl68]

Colors in the east
Awakening geese calling
To form the day's flock

[Morden]

Speaking of geese--a Canada goose has usurped an osprey nest platform here. What does it think the goslings are going to do?

[mamselle]

Well, don't geese learn to fly early on as much as any other bird?

I suppose at some point they'll get pushed out of the nest and required to flap their wings, won't they?

I mean, they don't just do land and water, they're all-purpose birds...

;--}

M.

[Morden]

They usually nest on the ground because the goslings can't fly for the first few months.  They can walk and swim much earlier.

[mamselle]

Ah, thanks.

I stand (or sit, or fly) corrected...

M.

[AmLitHist]

Our campus has been overrun with Canada geese since it was built in the 1960s.  Periodically they used to have a local woman bring in her border collie to patrol (apparently the geese are scared of only that breed of dog?).  But our nest in the raised flower beds, near our lake, in the middle of walkways, and particularly on the roofs of our buildings. Every spring there are security alerts to keep students away from the various nests, and the cops put up barricades to keep people away from the nests in common areas.

Every year, there's a nest on the corner of the third-floor roof of our library building, and when fledging time comes, mom or dad lines up the fluff-balls on the edge of the roof and pushes them off one by one.  They hit the pavement below (without much flapping of wings), catch their breath, then waddle off uninjured. These are some tough geese!

In other news, ALHS took off the cover from our window AC in the bedroom yesterday, to find a sturdy mud-mortared robin's nest with three eggs in it.  I've kept telling Little Cat lately that there's a bird outside the window; now there will be a family!  Mom sat in the trees and watched us work around that window yesterday as we moved garden soil, etc., but she didn't divebomb or get excited. 

[cathwen]

While sitting in a daze trying to wake up with morning coffee, staring mindlessly out our picture window, a Great Blue Heron flew low across the condo rooflines.  Such a treat!  (My husband, who missed it, said, "Make it come back!"  Alas, I couldn't.)

[mamselle]

They are soooo cool!

M.

[Puget]

I visited my parents over break and we went to the local wildlife refuge. Bald eagles are pretty much guaranteed but were especially plentiful -- at least 6 individuals (2 mature and and 4 immature who are probably last year's offspring). Also several herons and various wildfowl (my duck categories are generally mallard and not-a-mallard, but my dad can identify them all).

[mamselle]

I'm sad to say that of all the swans, ducks, and herons spotted last year around this time, on my walks in the same area so far this year, I've only seen 2 swans (there were 8, at least, last spring), a few geese (they'll show up later, I'm not worried about them), very few ducks (there were two or three small families, I'm just seeing a couple pairs right now) and no herons (and there were definitely four, one of which hung on throughout most of the winter but disappeared about a month or so ago; I haven't seen him/her since).

The Boffleheads (love that name) have not reappeared; I did see a couple of tiny titmice the other day, and of course many sparrows, robins, red-winged blackbirds, and crows.

No hawks or owls (which sometimes hang out in the trees in a nearby cemetery), either, but they eat all the little critters on the ground, and those are all gone, thanks to the overzealous zenophytophobes who've cleared out all the underbrush along the riverbank where they, the duck families, the swans, and at least one of the herons hung out last year.

The idiocy is that, OK, fine, they were invasive, but their roots were holding the banks in and providing ground cover for the moles, voles, and mice in the area. And only in one area--where a concerned resident got proactive and raised a bunch of seedlings, then planted them with sleeves to keep the rabbits from snacking on them--has anyone seemed to consider what will happen if they just leave all those drying reeds around in piles* and don't replace them with something whose roots can do the same thing.

But nature is having its own back: the canebreaks (I think it's kudzu, but whatever) are re-populating themselves wherever they were cleared before, popping up everywhere, and in a couple weeks, they'll probably be back. And the guys who were working on the (necessary, but still disruptive) sewage/freshwater splitting pipes at the confluence seem to be nearly out of there, so maybe the swans will come back to the nest they had at that spot, as well (if they made it through the winter or didn't go somewhere else).

Anyway, that's how it looks from here for the moment.

M.

*Tearing them down didn't lead to clearing them, for which I'm actually grateful...I'm guessing whoever got a grant to do the first round ran out of funds to pay for clearance, so the piles of broken-down stalks will provide the smaller rodents with new homes, and maybe things will right themselves shortly.

And the underlying issue is, native plants obviously can't survive there or the invasives wouldn't have gotten a root-hold in the first place. And that's not going to resolve as long as the main roadway that parallels the brook is as full of cars as it always, ever, is, so the native plants are unlikely to return, and we'll just end up with barren, eroding banks. Grrrrr.......if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Thursday's_Child]

That's sad, Mamselle.  Having good intentions isn't the same thing as actually knowing what actually needs to be done & how to do it.

Migration seems odd this year - seeing very few of the usual species that stop by while in transit.  However, I have a catbird hanging around & have seen the first great-crested flycatcher.  Chickadees fledged a few days ago, too.

[AmLitHist]

Hummingbird feeders are up--two in front, one in back yard. 

Illinois has told everyone to empty the birdbaths and take in the seed feeders until the end of May, due to the bird flu.  They did say that hummingbird and oriole feeders are OK, though.  (Birdbaths can be used if they're cleaned with bleach weekly.)