It could have been the nest of American Crows and they left the debris on the ground. I checked the Birds of North America online site (I can't link to it because it's a subscription site, but I hope it's OK to quote from it) - Great site, well worth joining. If you participated in the GBBC you get a free trial subscription. Apparently crows sometimes pull living twigs off trees to make their nests, and they line them with various materials including bark strips. From Birds of North America online site: "Nest Construction Both sexes build nest; no information on relative share of each sex. Although both sexes bring in nest-lining material, female does more of detailed fine-tuning of nest lining than does male (CC). Builds nest mostly between 07:00 and 11:00 (S. S. Dickey in Gross 1946); early in morning, as early as 8 min after sunrise (Reaume 1987b); likely throughout day (CC), as in Northwestern Crow (Verbeek and Butler 1999). New nest distinguishable from old one by presence of fresh, dead twigs on ground below; these twigs fall accidentally and are never retrieved (Reimann 1942). In Encino, CA, and Stillwater, OK, pulls and breaks off living twigs from trees as well as picking up twigs from ground (CC). Gathers materials from different directions around nest tree, not from nest tree itself (Reaume 1987b). Helpers in Florida (Kilham 1989), Cape Cod, MA (Chamberlain-Auger et al. 1990), and in Oklahoma (CC) participated in bringing material to the nest. With 2 adults and several helpers bringing sticks, the congestion around the nest resulted in birds having to wait for a chance to get to the nest; helpers usually left their sticks for the female to work in (Kilham 1989). Period between completion of nest and egg-laying in Florida 6Â16 d (Kilham 1989), but Emlen (1942) reported building right up to egg-laying in California. Time to complete first nests in California 13 d (range 11Â17, n = 6 nests [Emlen 1942]; 10Â14 d [CC]); 5 and 9 d in 2 nests with helpers in Florida (Kilham 1989), 10Â14 d in Oklahoma (CC). Second nests take less time to build: 9 d (Emlen 1942); 6Â8 d (Graber et al. 1987); 5Â10 d in California and Oklahoma (CC). Structure And Composition Matter Bottom and sides consist mainly of dead branches, 0.6Â3.5 cm diameter (Reimann 1942) and usually Claire

Hi bandjzmom. Since you use Photobucket for your pictures, follow this procedure. Go back to your photobucket album. Move your cursor over the picture that you want. You will now see that Email & IM, Direct Link, HTML Code, and IMG Code came up. Select HTML Code. Copy it to your clipboard. Sometimes Photobucket will do it automatically copy it for you and sometimes it doesn't. Just to be on the safe side, you copy it. Come back to the forum or any other forum and paste what you copied in Photobucket. It should come up in the message. Try it.

I think I've solved the mystery! I think it's a warbling vireo. I don't think they've been to our property before....but who knows for sure. They are very secretive. Our 35 acres has exploded with growth this year. I think it's because of the severe winter we had, followed by an incredibly wet spring. So much fun getting a new bird around here! Last year, I started hearing a northern parula, and I'm still hearing it. I've googled the warbling vireo's nest and some of the images look just like mine. Woohoo!!

Looks exactly like a yellow jacket nest. Yes, the cells are very small...and the larvae are very small, too. Skunks are just one of the animals that commonly dig up these nests. Yes, they get stung plenty, but they don't care. ;-)