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House Wrens and Carolina Wrens have both been singing madly around my home for the past few days. The House Wrens appear to be using two nestboxes on the property. One male controls both boxes, and I have seen him with another silent wren at each. It is not clear to me whether he has one partner (with the other box a dummy nest) or two (with nests in both). I suppose it is also possible that he does not have a mate yet. In any case, I am hoping that there will be baby House Wrens in the near future.
The last two days I set up my BirdCam at water dishes. Below are some of the better results. Using a motion-sensitive camera makes it easy to get the lens close to the birds, but difficult to control lighting or a bird's position at the time of exposure.
Some Common Grackles:
An American Robin:
A Blue Jay:
A Gray Catbird:
A bathing House Sparrow:
The last is a House Sparrow with a very short tail. It is either an adult who lost all its tail feathers (either to a predator or molt) or a young bird whose feathers have not fully grown in. I think the former more likely because the other feather groups seem normal.
More BirdCam photos are available at my Flickr account.
