Towhee Tussle!

Today was an exciting day in the park. In V18, right on the edge of the park, Laura and I observed two male towhees and one female in a sort of tussle. The males were chasing each other back and forth across Wembley Park Road. They were performing their wing-raising display for each other, which is meant to intimidate competitors, but really just looks like a sort of jerky wave which shows off their “armpits”. It’s cool to see because male towhees only do the performance in the spring when they’re defending their territories. This was the first time I’ve seen them do it this year. One male tended to do the display from the park edge of the road, and the other male tended to display from the front yard closest to the park. The park male was banded - -AO, and based on the location, I’m guessing that he’s YYAO from last year and has lost his yellow bands. I never got a good enough look at the yard male to see his bands (or lack thereof) because he was in a dense bush in the yard most of the time.

The other exciting news of the day is that I saw a female carrying leaves for the first time this season! That means that they are starting to think about (or have already started) nest-building! When they are on the leaf-stage it is difficult to find the nests because they are not very invested in it yet (as opposed to when they have eggs or nestlings), so they don’t aggressively defend the nest, and it would just look like another clump of leaves if you did happen to look in the right place. The female in question today was ORPA, and she was carrying a leaf in V10. She flew to a large clump of Indian Plum, and I was not able to tell if she dropped the leaf or if she deliberately placed it somewhere. Sometimes they just drop the leaves (or grass) without taking them to the nest site.

In other news I observed an unbanded male calling close to the tennis center in N2 in an umbrella-shaped bush. After a little while a female popped up, but we were not able to find a nest in the area, and they didn’t appear defensive.

I also saw BABY again in what seems to be his usual area (T9). He was calling agitatedly, but then flew off.

The Anna’s Hummingbird along Rainbow Trail is still incubating her eggs. Today she flew all around the nest while calling, then continued to call while actually sitting on the nest. It seems odd that she would advertise herself from the nest, and possibly alert predators to her location, but most of the time she is very still and silent on the nest.