This year’s nesting season seems to go on and on. The cold spring we (and the birds) experienced seems the logical reason for this. Failed nesting attempts due to cold, wet weather caused some birds to try a second nesting and others like the swallows waited awhile.

Young robins with their speckled breasts are still showing up even though we are into August. Just when I thought we had seen the last robin fledgling, three landed in the bird bath and began arguing with one another.

Several weeks ago, we assumed the bushtits had finished nesting for this year. When flocks of 15-20 birds land in the bird bath or swarm over the feeders, it signifies that the young are out of the nest. Family groups are gathering together. They’ll forage for food as a group until next year. Then the flocks break apart as the birds pair off for nesting. When a single pair of bushtits showed up the other day, it was a bit unusual.

These tiny birds have been devouring the insects on our trees and shrubs every day. The flocks come in twittering waves of bouncing birds. If you’re near the tree or bush they are feeding in, they work around you as if you are part of the foliage.

The two bushtits that landed on the feeder were alone. I checked the entire area, the bird bath and the other feeders. They were the only bushtits to be seen. The obvious question was one I look up all the time. Will these birds start a second family? They raise their families in a much shorter time than many of the other songbirds. The later in the season they build a nest, the faster it is completed. The young leave the nest two weeks after hatching.

Bushtits are one of my favorite birds, but sometimes I feel there’s a lot I still don’t know about them. Do they raise multiple broods? Do some pair up later in the season to raise a family? According to Arthur Cleveland Bent, they do both. The books compiled by one of America’s outstanding ornithologists, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, contain some of the most detailed accounts of bird observation found anywhere. A significant amount of the recorded work was done in the Pacific Northwest.

According to one account in Bent’s Life Histories of North American Jays, Crows and Titmice, a pair of bushtits near Portland raised three broods in one season. The assumption was that these birds often raise two broods. The chapter also mentioned that sometimes a pair of birds traveling in a flock will break away and nest later in the season. The writer assumed these are birds that were disturbed during a first nesting attempt. The urge to raise a family still exists so they choose a second mate and try again.

If I had paid better attention to the pair that were feeding together at the feeder, it would have been easy to tell if they were a mated pair. All I had to do was check the color of their eyes. The male has dark eyes. The female’s eyes are yellow.

Are we going to have another brood of bushtits raised in our area? There could be a long stretch of warm weather still to come and there is time to raise a family. For now, I’m watching for the lone pair that isn’t traveling with the flock and I will be looking into their eyes!

Write to Joan Carson, PO Box 217, Poulsbo, WA 98370. Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for a reply.