FishkaFishka

Hello all, hopefully this is an appropriate place to post this. I have bluebirds in one of my nest boxes. There were 5 eggs in the box as of two days ago, which had just been laid. Today when I checked the box, there were only two. Then I spotted the remains of three broken eggs on the ground near the box. The parents are definitely still in the area and attentive. I’m not sure how this could have happened. This is the one box on my property that doesn’t have a predator guard yet (so of course they chose that one). But if a predator got in, it seems strange that it would leave two eggs intact. There are wrens who just began building in a box nearby, but I’ve actually never had much trouble with wrens before, despite them being common around here. Is it possible that the bluebirds recognized an issue with eggs and threw them out themselves? anyways, my main question is should I install a predator guard or wren guard, and if yes is there a way I can make a makeshift one right away with materials I have around my house. Thanks.

aha, I think you’re right. That’s actually not what I thought it was. I didn’t think of the sapsucker, because my field guide shows both sexes as having prominent red patches, which this bird had absolutely none of. But that wing stripe would indicate a sapsucker wouldn’t it? And a Google search yields members of the species with no red. Thank you.

I’m fairly confident on the ID myself, but I want to see what you all think, because I was a bit surprised by it. It was spotted earlier this evening in a tree on my property in West Michigan, Grand Rapids/Walker area. my first impression was that it was very very dark brown, which I believe was a trick of the light, because it looked more black to me as it changed angles. It had white spotting on the back, which grew more concentrated closer to the end of the tail and wingtips. The sides/breast were lighter with lots of blurry dark gray bars. Bill was longish and very sharply pointed. Visibly larger than a downy woodpecker. It had a noticeable white vertical bar on each wing, which I believe to be a color variation unique to the individual. The pictures are very blurry, sorry about that. I didn’t have a camera with me, so attempted to take a photo through my binoculars with my phone. The included sketch is based off my original field notes, my blurry pictures, and my memory of what the bird looked like. It’s not a perfect sketch obviously, but it gives the general idea of where The main markings were. Facial markings aren’t exactly replicated, but there were definitely white lines on the face.

I think you’re right. Never seen a juvenile Cooper’s before. I have found audio of a young Cooper’s hawk making similar noises. The video is working from my end, I wonder if I’m the only one who can see it.

I’m pretty stuck on this one. There were two raptors sitting on the utility pole, spotted in San Bernardino, CA.It was bright and I sadly didn’t have my binoculars, so I couldn’t see them clearly, or even get decent photos. An angry mockingbird wouldn’t leave them alone. They were dark brown on top and white with dark brown streaks underneath. The undertail coverts, as far as I could see, were white without streaks. The tails looked fairly long. They were making sounds, which can be heard most clearly in the video starting at 0:07. Apologies for poor video and photo quality. A11DC846-29A3-4799-90EE-C69A134DBC70.MOV

Thank you both.

Pretty sure it’s a black phoebe, but wanted to check. Spotted in Rialto, Southern California in a built-up residential area. Went to enter it in eBird and apparently it hasn’t been reported here before. The belly was white.

How many baby bluebirds do you see in this photo? The babies have fledged now, but I’m a little stuck. At first, I thought there were three. The baby on the far right is obvious. And I thought the other visible head belonged to a body that was under the far right baby, and the the head of the far left body was underneath the other. But now I see two babies when I look at the photo. The nest contained a clutch of five. Two eggs didn’t hatch, I got rid of them after fledging. And as you can see, there are only two older babies in the second and third photos. So what happened to the other egg/chick? My theory is that the baby hatched, but died, and the parents got rid of it. In any case, I’m not quite sure what to report to NestWatch.

That’s what I thought! Thank you for the confirmation. That’s a lifer for me. ?

I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a picture of the bird. I spotted it in my yard around 6:00 pm today, in West Michigan. It was tiny, and darted around in the trees very quickly, poking around as if looking for something. Teeny tiny little bill. Grayish/greenish on top. The breast looked white or pale gray, but shadows made it hard to tell. Undertail coverts were also white. It had a small yellow stripe or patch in the middle of its forehead in between two black stripes. There were markings of some kind on the wings, but I couldn’t see them clearly due to the bird’s constant movement. The wings also appeared to have a faint yellow tinge. I have an pretty good guess as to what it was, but I’d like to hear what some people here think. Any ideas help.

Cave swallow?

American woodcock. Added it to my yard list too!

I’ve been having huge flocks of red-winged blackbirds congregating in the fields behind my property. Also saw a newly arrived song sparrow and cowbird today.

After watching them the past few days, they have to be one of my favorites!

There are some very nice shots on this thread. My best photos of the day...not very good, but I was excited to add common redpolls to my yard list.