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Its right outside the bathroom window at my parents house
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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
(Post 450366)
Cool, I have Cardinals that hatch out a brood in the Yew by my front door every year. You're lucky to have an observation point that won't freak Mama bird.
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Nice pics, classicman. And for Bruce, too: I have a line of yews across half the front of the house, and sometimes cardinals nest in there. About three years ago, the nest was right in front of the bathroom window. I could see only Mama's head from the window, but I'd get a closer look every day outside.
Then one day the eggs were totally missing. Calls to bird people reinforced my suspicions that blue jays or, more likely, crows had taken them for breakfast :sniff: (both of these are in abundance in the neighborhood--as are cardinals, robins, mourning doves, etc., fortunately). Could've been a raccoon or opossum, too.
Last year I was pruning a forsythia, and a cardinal came flying out when my head was just a couple feet away from its nest in an adjoining shrub. Glad it's not the attacking kind! The next few days, but only if the parents were off, I'd look at the cardinal eggs in the nest, and I showed the neighbor whose peonies are close to the forsythia, by standing behind the peonies and bending the branch down enough. But I must've showed the predators, too--the eggs were soon gone! Once again, it was probably jays or their dastardly kin the crows (probably too flimsy a shrub for a predatory or scavenging mammal to try climbing--no, not my neighbor, either :( ).
Immediately, though, the cardinals were rebuilding the nest in a Christmas tree-like juniper close to the driveway and my car, about 10 feet from the forsythia. My frequent proximity that first day, though--walking right between my car and the head-high nest a lot while doing yardwork--drove them off before they completed the nest.
They moved to an unpruned privet 5 feet back and set up house there. This place worked, and I guess they had a successful brood. Later in the summer, as in most summers, there are times when I saw five or six or more cardinals feeding together--loosely "together," like all in the same part of the backyard and sorta going around "grazing" after each other from low perch to ground to low perch.
