Project Phoebe’s fieldwork begin a few weeks ago and is off to a great start! Our team members have been out looking for breeding pairs of Phoebes and new nests all over Davis, Woodland, West Sacramento, and more. We have found lots of old mud cup nests, which may be used again this year. Constructing a mud nest is an immense amount of work–the birds bring back hundreds of clumps of mud to construct their nest and line the inside with a layer of fine grasses. To avoid doing all of this leg work, some birds reuse old nests from previous years!
We think that breeding activity may have been delayed by all of the rain. For most of much, the birds were quiet and we weren’t seeing signs of nest construction of renovation. Last week, that all changed! We now have several pairs attending nests and today we found our first tiny white eggs in Davis.
– Sage
