Slow Day In The Woods But Two FOS Birds At The House

I went out birding this afternoon in the wake of a cold front that moved through. Relatively light north winds were blowing, so I thought today might be a pretty good day. I could not have been more wrong. Nothing was moving down in the woods. Nothing was singing. Nothing was flying. It was as quiet as I've ever seen it down there. So, I came up to the house, built a fire in the chiminea and sat outside. I saw more sitting outside the house than I did in the woods. There were two FOS birds that showed up while I was out there - Mississippi Kite and Chimney Swift.

The bluebirds are building their nest! I was getting concerned about them. I'm hoping that with them starting a little later, maybe they'll have a higher percentage of eggs that hatch. It looks like they're probably at least a week or so away from laying eggs. The male bluebird also flies over to the box in my yard and sings quite a bit. I wonder if he's making sure that no more bluebirds nest in it, or if he has another female that he wants to use the box.

Birds seen on March 31, 2009 (19 species): Cattle Egret, Turkey Vulture, Mississippi Kite (FOS), Eurasian Collard-Dove, Mourning Dove, Barred Owl, Chimney Swift (FOS), Red-bellied Woodpecker, White-eyed Vireo, American Crow, Purple Martin, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Barn Swallow, Carolina Chickadee, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Eastern Bluebird, Northern Mockingbird, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird