Dear Members and Friends of Skagit Audubon Society,
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch in our living room when some movement outside the window caught my eye. It turned out to be a pair of Bushtits, birds we have seen only occasionally here in the past, typically as small flocks moving quickly through in the late summer and fall. These two were fluttering around the Tibetan prayer flags that hang across the south side of our house, picking the loose threads from their fraying edges. At around the same time, they started showing up at our suet feeder. Over the next couple of days, I noticed that when they left the vicinity of the feeder, they always flew off to the west, so one evening I headed out that way to investigate.
I spotted the pair again feeding in the newly emerged foliage of a Japanese larch that stands around two hundred feet west of our house, on the other side of an intermittent stream and a thicket of willow and red osier dogwood. Ducking below the lower branches of the tree, I found their partially finished, hanging nest, an amazing construction woven of grasses, mosses, small twigs, and bits of a variety of different lichens. I couldn’t really pick them out from the rest, but I assumed the Tibetan prayer flag threads were in there somewhere too.
A week or so later, the nest appeared to be finished, complete with a tiny, funnel-like entrance near the top. Now, instead of the pair together, only one Bushtit at a time is showing up at the suet feeder, so I suspect they have started setting on their eggs. Soon, hopefully, we’ll be able to hear the nestlings begging from the cozy wee pouch their parents so carefully constructed, and not too long after that, they’ll all be off, foraging together through the neighborhood. I hope these amazing, tiny birds that look a little like ping pong balls with tails attached will come back to nest here again in future years. In the meantime, may those ancient Tibetan prayers protect them!
Bushtit nest
Photo by John Day
Switching gears here a bit, as my term as President is almost up, I want to express my sincere appreciation and thanks to my fellow board members and chapter members for all the work you do to make Skagit Audubon the great organization it is. Photo: Bushtit nest by John Day