Birds!
I don’t know what kind they are. The mother is a larger songbird-frame bird, with a grey back and a dull yellow belly. She flies kind of oddly, with her wings sort of cupped and fluttering. I’ve seen more birds like her, and they all fly like that. They’re really agile and can hover well, but they aren’t fast across open air. I can’t remember ever seeing them before, and I would remember that flight pattern, but they’re all over the place, always in pairs, this year.
The nest was clinging to the side of the tree. You can see a lot of webbing in the photo- I think that’s either webworm (tent caterpillar) webbing or spider webbing, and it was worked all into the nest. I’d imagine “builds its nest out of webbing and sticks it to a tree trunk” is a pretty distinctive bird thing.
@lookatthisbabybird and general @birdblr, anyone wanna take a stab at IDing? Googling and those “find that bird” websites haven’t gotten me anywhere so far. I’m in Central Texas, and sometimes we get birds that are supposed to only live in Mexico, so it could be some of them came up from there.
Maybe a barn swallow?? I can’t see the bottom of the nest, but they usually make like a cup out of mud then build a nest in it. Also maybe western blue birds???
Mama is bigger than a swallow and doesn’t have the sleek shape and forked tail, plus there isn’t that much mud in the nest.
Definitely not a bluebird. Mama is yellow and grey.
After more Googling, I think they might be Western Kingbirds. I’ll see if I can photograph the mother later to confirm.
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