I HAVE NEW NEIGHBORS!

I have lived at my house for almost 13 years. A couple years after I moved in, Manuel and Maria moved in on one side of me. Several years after that the pot smokers moved in on the other side of me. That house is across the gully, so I don’t really see the people over there and only know someone is home when a stray waft of weed works its way across to my side.

Now I have someone new living nearby.

Really nearby.

Last week, I interrupted some little brown birds in the middle of starting a nest on top of my front porch light. I figured they wouldn’t come back once they discovered the amount of traffic the front porch gets. Over the course of the next couple of days, though, they continued adding sticks and bits of nesting material until they had a lovely nest built.

Yesterday, I took a tour of the inside of the nest and stuck my phone up there for a picture.

Someone has been busy laying eggs!

They don’t seem to be around the nest much. I hear them chit-chatting out there now and then, but they skedaddle the second there is any movement behind my door. Despite several attempts to get a better look at the parents, by the time I can see onto the porch, the birds have flown away!

A Google search of “little brown bird that lays blue eggs in North Carolina” yielded: Eastern Blue Bird, American Robin, Blue Grosbeak, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, Eastern Phoebe, Carolina Wren, Tufted Titmouse, and Indigo Bunting. I have found no match between “the glimpse” and pictures of each bird on this list.

So, the puzzle of the week is: Who is my Neighbor?