Thanks! Seeing the nest building 'made my day'! They have seen me around now for quite awhile so hope I can get closer & get a close up of some of the nest material showing in the 'cubbyhole' in the cactus they found to set up residence.Only last year was I ever close enough to verify it did have the orange ring around the eye but the curved bill has always been obvious. Our state bird is the funny looking & acting roadrunner! They mostly run on the ground but do fly a bit & seem to prefer to live around buildings & populations of humans. Can even kill a rattlesnake I've read. One does live in our neighborhood & likes to run on the roof peak of our house & when it sees me w/camera it almost looks like it stops to pose for me!

I have a feeder with 1 1/2 inch openings (square wire style) so the bigger birds cannot get in. It really helps. Sometimes a Red-bellied woodpecker will show up and try to hog the feeder, but he cannot access the mealworms so he gives up. The Blues just wait for him to leave, and then have their fill.

Our desert Thrashers will peck tomatoes open to get the juice, Brown thrashers are omnivores, so maybe they are pecking open the peppers to get the developing seeds. The cabbage - maybe a rabbit or rodent.

Thanks! It just pleased me to see a bird that's usually very secretive suddenly come forward and enjoy itself in front of the camera. The sand and stones was an afterthought - I live in New England and it's always a pain to get a pole into the ground in between the subsurface rocks. Being on the coast, I have plenty of sand and stones. It's pouring rain now, and it must be hard for the hummers to get nectar from flowers or find insects. They're fighting over the feeder which has an umbrella over it so it's reasonably dry. Sort of like sitting on the porch with a drink watching the rain. Claire