A couple days ago, Sena found a bird's nest in our front porch artificial Christmas tree. The small nest is made from the clippings of Sena's ornamental grasses. It has 4 small eggs, which are white with dark specks.
We could hear a bird singing while we were sitting in the house and it always sounded close by. We could see it flitting around but we couldn't identify it. We thought it might be nesting in our magnolia tree at first but Sena couldn't find one.
I've scared a bird a couple of times lately and it always seemed to be flying off our front porch from somewhere. I never thought to peek in the little fake Christmas tree sitting in a big pot.
So, I got the critter cam out. It hasn't been getting any use since we solved the problem of our yard drain grate lids popping off by having them screwed down last year. We never did find out what flipped the lids.
Anyway, Sena suggested moving the pot with the tree around to face the front of the porch and set up the critter cam facing the tree. Both the tree and the camera on a tripod are somewhat sheltered from the wind behind one of the columns.
Moving the tree confused the bird a little because it had a little trouble finding it at first. We got a good enough video to identify it as a female house finch. We don't know when she laid the eggs, but they take a couple of weeks to incubate.
We had been trying to keep birds off our porch by setting out a couple of fake snakes. The birds ignored them. And I guess they don't mind nesting in fake trees, either.
The nest is probably in a fairly safe spot on the porch. Crows and other predatory birds fly around, but might be less likely to see it from the air. Maybe we should get a fake dog.
We'll try to keep our intrusions to a minimum, because it tends to tip off big, hungry birds. On the other hand, we would like to get enough footage to make short videos of the progress of the nestlings.
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