If you have noticed birds building nests around your yard or your neighborhood you may be getting curious about the process. You will notice that birds like to build a particular kind of nest. Carolina Wrens like to nest in protected places near your house. Bluebirds like those nest boxes people put up but they will also like to build a nest in a hole in a tree as do chickadees and woodpeckers. Some birds build a nest in a bush or high up in a tree. It’s fun to try to figure out what kind of bird is building the nest. Mostly you watch to see the birds that are building.
Do you ever wonder what goes on inside a bird’s nest? Well if you are interested you can “sneak a peak” by going to one of the “bird cam’s” available on line. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers several and here’s a link to those. http://cams.allaboutbirds.org. Here you will find Barn Owls, Barred Owls , Hawks Herons and Ospreys nesting. Sometimes there’s not much going on but once the nestlings hatch it gets more interesting.
Here is another site that offers a lot of different bird cams. http://www.viewbirds.com/#northerncardinal
And here’s a link to the Berry College bald eagle nest cam where there is a pair of young eagles waiting for their parents to come feed them. http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/
What if you have a best box in your yard and believe it has a nest in it? Well, you can watch the mother and father bird come and go. You will see them carrying things for nesting material and then later you will see them taking food to the babies once they hatch. It can be fun just to guess at what’s going on. But you can also take a peak maybe once a week. Don’t be a nuisance or the birds might abandon the nest. Here’s some information about nest boxes http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife/Gardening-Tips/Attracting-Nesting-Birds.aspx
Hope you get to do some bird watching over the coming weeks.
