The Nest that Sylvia Built

Okay, so I called her Betty before, but I have changed Mama Bluebird's name to Sylvia. Lloyd and Sylvia Bluebird. And they are building away. I should say Sylvia is building away because it seems that she is doing all the work and all Lloyd is doing is running his beak and flying in and out every now and then to seemingly criticize her work. The progression is amazing and the footage is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen.

So the routine basically goes like this. Sylvia lands on top of the house and makes some noise and hops around with a bunch of dead grass in her beak. Then she hops in and drops it as she enters the box. She chirps while she hops around and then does the spin, pat down dance. She spreads her wings, sticks her tail in the air and spins in a circle, patting down the grass on the sides with her chest. It seems she is also scratching with her feet. The center is still bare, but she is building up the sides.
Then she flies out and comes back about 10 minutes or more later with more grass and continues her funny pat down dance. Lloyd is outside on the top of the box or in a nearby tree just chirping like crazy and my guess is he's asking for updates, bossing her around or asking if she needs anymore supplies. He flies in a few minutes later empty-beaked and inspects. Sometimes he goes in and actually messes up what she's done! And sometimes he takes stuff out as if it is not suitable. The other day he was inside and she was outside and it was almost as if she was yelling at him as he scattered stuff about and she flew in on top of him and he immediately flew out! It was the first time we had seen them both inside.

Anyway, a couple extremely windy days, a brief cold snap and some freakish wintry weather have upset their progress slightly,, but they have kicked it up a notch. I understand that she will lay her eggs a couple days after the completion of the nest. There is still some wood showing through on the bottom, so I think they are still working.