Every time I walk by the cholla cactus forest I check the empty nests that are visible from the sidewalk to see if a curved-billed thrasher is laying eggs. This evening I performed this ritual as usual. After looking at the two most visible nests and disappointingly found them empty my gaze “landed” in the middle of this spiny thicket and, surprisingly, met an eyeball. I looked at it more carefully and saw that a head of a great roadrunner was sticking out from an almost invisible third nest.
Will the bird freak out and abandon the nest if I take photographs and draw sketches while it sitting on eggs?