Towhee Obsessed!

I had an email from Donna today. She had found a nest in her asparagus when she was cleaning her garden and she was hoping I could take a look at it so I headed to the park after I dropped my daughter off at school.

Took me a while, but I finally found the little nest on the ground in the ferny remains of the asparagus. Funny, but Haynes had thought there were song sparrows building a nest in the asparagus in the spring as he had seen song sparrows flying in and out, but try as we might, we were never able to see the nest. Aren't they amazing?

As I quickly walked around a bird caught my eye in the crabapple in the center of the lower gardens. It was a female towhee and I was most excited. Then I realized there were two more towhees near her - both males! And darn, I didn't have my camera.

Ran back home, got the camera and rushed back!

This time, I found them foraging in the leaf litter in the scrubby little area between the meadow and the lower gardens.

They got wise to me and flew off to another area where I followed them. They travelled around the gardens in their little group. It's very exciting that they've been so visible.

You never know what you are going to see. There was also a red-tailed hawk that was making some of the birds nervous. It clearly has been hunting as there were several feathers of a bird on the ground that had definitely been eaten. I couldn't identify what type of bird it had been, but it did have fairly long feathers so it was a larger sized bird, possibly a blue jay.