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unusually good year for nesting species in the yard



This past weekend, I saw a female Indigo Bunting pick up a skeletal leaf
from a flower bed near my living room window. She carried it short distance
and entered a little tangle. I watched her, 8 to 10 feet away, as she
twirled her body and ducked vigorously to form the inside of her nest. Later
I went outside and looked into what appeared to be a finished nest. But she
spooked once when she saw me in the window, and after that I thought she
deserted her nest because I never saw her in it again. But this morning, to
my surprise, I saw TWO whitish eggs in the nest. They looked about the size
of large jellybeans. Wonderful! This is the third Indigo Bunting nest I've
seen -- found the other two long after the breeding season. All were
cleverly attached to 3 or 4 twigs or stems. One was in a crape myrtle, one
in a very small lilac, and this year's is attached to a blackberry cane, a
shoot of Joe-Pye-Weed and I forget what else. This year's and last year's
nests were quite low to the ground -- 18 to 24 inches. All have been close
to my house -- a wrenlike preference?

What else? I have a rather tame Wood Thrush that behaves like a yard robin,
often foraging on the ground in the open. This morning it flushed near me
when I was outside hanging up a hummingbird feeder. It flew only 8 feet or
so before landing again and resuming foraging. Always in the past I thought
these birds were very elusive:  easy to hear, hard to see. This one is an
exception. And it's beautiful. Its reddish colored upper parts are handsome,
but its head is an even brighter copper color. It glows. "Bright as a new
penny" comes to mind when I see it. Wood Thrushes are special to me.

Blue Grosbeaks are apparently nesting nearby because they have been coming
to my seed feeder for weeks. Also, the hummingbird feeders suddenly are
getting a lot of traffic -- either late migrants or the first fledglings.
They're pretty frantic. And I have a pair of towhees in residence. Not too
exciting for most of you, but they're new for me as breeding birds. They
drop in during the winter but then depart to more suburban yards for
nesting. This year my yard is much brushier than in the past; maybe that's
why they like it. And, finally, a Whip-poor-will sang as if on territory
near my house this spring. It was the first time in almost 10 years. Now
it's drifted farther away, but it's kept up the singing.

Ginger Travis
Orange County, N.C.