Not much change here. Still the same mob of singing Tennessee
Warblers (not actually as boring as it sounds!), the apple tree full
of Indigo Buntings. the migrant Magnolias and Black-throated Blues
and all the rest. I had about four CANADA WARBLERS on presumed
territories along the brook, several territorial Hooded Warblers,
etc. Leaf-out is pretty advanced now, but I think that's a Broad-
winged Hawk's tail I can see protruding over the edge of the stick-
nest. I also found a SWAINSON'S THRUSH on the ground this morning.
I carelessly dropped Eastern Phoebe and Black-capped Chickadee into
the wrong list in a post I made a few days ago. These birds are now
incubating, not feeding young like the Robins and the Ravens! I
watched with interest as the Phoebe built her clutch, one egg per
day. She finished three days ago with five eggs. No cowbird eggs have
appeared! To outwit the Cowbird that I had observed scouting their
nest, the Phoebes employed a stratagem that was so simple it's hard
to believe it worked: they abandoned the scouted nest under the
northside eaves of my tiny workshop, leaving a bunch of long
horsehairs dangling in plain sight. (For years I've been putting
discarded bowhair out for the birds, and often find sparrow's nests
lined with it.) Then they built a new nest under the southside eaves.
The new location is scarcely twelve feet away from the old, but
offers the advantage of concealment behind vegetation. The Phoebes
left even more exuberant streamers of horsehair dangling from the new
nest, but these are easily overlooked behind the foliage. I have not
seen Phoebes use horsehair this way before, and wonder how they came
to take up the practice.
-Geo
Geo Kloppel
Bowmaker & Restorer
227 Tupper Road
Spencer NY 14883
607 564 7026
g...@cornell.edu
geoklop...@gmail.com
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