Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Parking Lot Birding

.
At LSC-CyFair we work a 4-day week in the summer. This is great in many ways but it means those four days are very long and don’t include any time for birding the campus. Luckily, I still get to see quite a few birds just in the lot where I park every day.

Every day when I arrive at CyFair I spend a few minutes watching the Western Kingbirds that are nesting near my parking spot.


The female is spending quite a bit of time in the nest now.




The Kingbirds tend to be very tolerant of most other birds. They have no problems with the White-winged Doves or Mourning Doves (below) that perch in the tree that holds their nest.


Nor did they seem to mind the Common Nighthawk that decided to rest in an adjacent tree on Monday.



 


They're fine, too, with the Northern Mockingbird that has its own reserved perch nearby.


However, whenever Great-tailed Grackles approach the nesting tree, both Kingbirds swoop down on the Grackles again and again until they have driven them a safe distance away. I assume this means that there are now eggs in the nest.

The Grackles don’t seem to mind too much, though. They simply find another part of the parking lot in which to do their displays and to have their morning drinks.




.

No comments:

Post a Comment