Today was a great birding day
despite the really really bad weather, or maybe because of it. There were so many photos… For tonight, just this one, more in the morning. The Gray (I got the spelling wrong earlier) hung around all day and checked out all the feeders and made me all giddy.
The Robins
have found their ways around the backyard now and seem to like it here. The lawn is full of earthworms (when it’s not frozen), there are opportunities to take a bath (even when it’s freezing cold), and there are plenty of leaf piles and bushes to dig through for nesting material and insects. And if nothing is found, there are still the feeders. The Robins enjoy mealworms, grape jelly and raisins.
Speaking of brood patches,
Red-bellied woodpeckers have them too, and since with this species, the male and the female both sit on the eggs, the male also has a brood patch. In these photos, you can see the “crevice” along his belly very well. In between that line, a patch of bare skin is hiding which, when it touches and covers the eggs, can keep them warm.
Meet Lagertha
She seems to have won the BB lady fight the other day, and is definitely a different one. There is a male hanging around with her as well. She has started to bring nesting material into the box and tried to bury the four eggs that have been in there, so after careful consideration, I have removed the four eggs that have been in the box before. The first ones had been laid at the end of March, and not been incubated. The Gilbertson box is on the small side and can only be opened from the top. If the four abandoned eggs would have sat under a new nest with babies and got crushed, the contents could have seeped into the nest, luring in insects, and a nest change would not have been easy. I try to interfere as little as possible with the nestbox, which works well with the camera. This is also how I was able to see what was going on in the nest. You have to always make sure that things are what they look like before you act if you face a situation like that. It is illegal to remove native bird eggs from an active nest.
Happy Easter weekend!
I hope there will be some faces that look as happy as this Blue Jay’s with his peanut prize.
