Nest Watch!

We have two small live oaks in our front garden.  One was planted as part of the landscape package when we moved in four years ago.  It's now about 15 feet tall and nice and full. The other is one that we planted to replace one of the originals that died a year after it was planted. It's much smaller than the first, but it's coming along.

Both of them seem to be bird magnets and last year we had Northern Mockingbirds nesting.  So last weekend, when we were being serenaded all afternoon by a mockingbird, we assumed they had taken up residence again.

However, when I zoomed my camera in to the higher of the two nests in that tree, I was surprised to see it wasn't a mockingbird sitting on the nest, but a Mourning Dove.

I've entered this year's first nest attempt report at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Nest Watch web site, even though the nest is too high up for me to get details like the number of eggs etc. 

She's been sitting on the nest all week, and Eric, whose "man cave"/den looks out to the front garden told me that the mockingbird has been hanging around most of the week too.

We joke that the babies will be probably be some sort of mocking-dove hybrid.

Has anyone else seen this kind of camaraderie between bird species?


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.