In early July I noticed a Gray Catbird eyeing an existing nest right outside my front door. This was unexpected because the nest was left over from last year, and it was only uncovered with some shrub-trimming last fall. Interestingly, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Birds of the World species account for the Gray Catbird mentions that a “new nest is usually built for each brood and for renests, but there is one observation of reuse of a Gray Catbird nest between years (Marshall et al. 2001).”

Because of this, I thought maybe she was just checking out the existing nest, especially since it was relatively late in the season and it would likely be a renest or second brood. But by July 12 she was incubating two beautiful blue eggs! I wasn’t sure how many eggs she’d lay, since clutch sizes vary from 1 – 6 eggs, but I wanted to keep an eye on her without disturbing the nest. I mounted a GoPro camera above the nest to remotely take videos and monitored her progress, but she stuck with just the two eggs. Stay tuned to see what happened!