The predators among us

Here's a new one on me:  a blue jay eating a house sparrow, and with some relish.  If this sparrow was a fledgling, it was pretty well grown.  I didn't see how this started, but my impression is the sparrow was predated elsewhere -- or found dead, I suppose -- and brought into this tree.  The jay ate half of it before inadvertently dropping it, at which point I went to look at it.  But when I retreated, the jay came back to collect the rest of the carcass, and flew off to eat it elsewhere.  That reads as a pretty substantial meal to me.

But now I'm fearing that the chickadee nestlings currently being fed in their box are going to have a rough go of it.

 

Open House

 

I've been a landlord for a long time, and I'm very familiar with the drill every time I show an open unit:  will the prospective tenants take it, or not?  Same goes for the birdhouses I put up.  Carolina wrens have been around my yard for a few weeks, and they've visited this birdhouse inside and out, but... they've yet to make up their minds, I think.

I've had two of these birdhouses up since the previous winter, and they've never been occupied.  They're sized for house wrens, but I don't know of anybody in Somerville who has a house wren.  I've seen exactly one in all my years here, migrating through, by all appearances.  Carolina wren has become much more of a city bird in recent years.  I hear them with some frequency, particularly in Cambridge.  And because they're here year round, they can get a jump on nesting. and grab the best nesting spots before the house wrens come through.

Unless, of course, they lose out to the chickadees...

But actually, I have an older nesting box, made out of a section of tree trunk, that I think the chickadees prefer.  So we'll just have to see, and probably will see, soon.  The cardinals at least are very busy collecting sticks.