Nests Happen

I came upon this cute little nest while I was shoot positioning and opening up the canopy in the Chenin blanc. I had an inkling that it could be a bluebird nest. We have bluebirds in the area so it was not a wild guess. The nest was very small (about 3 inches in diameter) and so neatly constructed. The mystery bird used grass to construct the nest. I know where that came from,

the tall grass that Kim and I weed wacked.
I went online to look for small blue bird eggs and found the Sialis.org page that was all about Nests and eggs that may show up in bluebird nestboxes. It described the eastern bluebird nest to a "t".

At around the same time, my husband was weed wacking in the Auxerrois and found this nest which he immediately identified as a mockingbird nest. He knew this because it is probably the same mockingbird that made a nest in the sage in my garden. We knew from previous online research that if there is an egg in the nest, the nest cannot be removed since the mockingbird is protected under the Migratory Bird Act, so "no Scout, not only can you not kill a mockingbird, you cannot even move it's nest." The funny thing is, my husband had noticed the mockingbird trying to build a nest in the Chardonnay and he would constantly remove the nest material, all the while, the wily mockingbird may have been constructing her real nest in the Auxerrois. They don't call these birds "mocking"birds for nothing! We are coping with these nests in the grapevines, but next time, we hope to do our canopy management before nests happen!