Below is the first view that I got of it when I was nest searching. My first thought was-- "that tail is too blue to be a robin." My next thought was "Why would a robin line its nest with a blue jay's tail?" Thinking outside the box, maybe not my forte. On closer inspection, it was quite obvious it was a blue jay sitting on the nest and not a robin, and I felt quite silly.If you are paying close attention, you can tell the nest is much more twiggy than a robin's nest. Robin's nest have three layers: sticks, mud and grass. They are very distinctive, and lucky for us, quite large. There is usually grass and sometimes string hanging down, and while there is string in this blue jay's nest it doesn't have the same look of having Spanish moss hanging down from it.
I was suprised the nest was right in the city, outside this hotel (or maybe it was a dorm), at our site near Foggy bottom. I didn't realize that blue jays would nest right in the city, but they do!
And here's a cardinal's nest at the site closest to our neighborhood. It is both smaller and more twiggy than a robin's nest. In addition, cardinals tend to nest lower than robins at about 6-8 ft.
It's the third cardinal's nest that I've seen this season. They don't have a very high success rate, according to my advisor only 10-15% of nests actually fledge young!
It's amazing when you spend several hours a week looking for nests how they will start to jump out at you everywhere. Eagle Eyes told me she was sitting on a bench at the botanical gardens with her boo and suddenly saw a robin's nest in the shrub right in front of them. I think he was probably impressed. I was definitely impressed when she told me later that she had been sitting at our kitchen table eating breakfast when she looked out the window and immediately noticed a robin's nest! Here's the view:
And here's a closer look at the female incubating:
No comments:
Post a Comment