Snake skin redux

I saw a new bird on Sunday. I was looking at the pine trees at the back of the yard to selectively lop off a few branches. I guess I was still enough, because a bird flew into the branches. I watched it for a bit and it watched me. I suspected it was nesting in the nest boxes nearby. I got a nice good look at it, so I hoped I'd be able to identify it in my bird book later. It was fairly distinctive: not small (maybe cardinal-sized), kind of gray body, a slight crest, a yellow belly, and reddish in the wings and tail, which I noticed when it was in flight.

Quite a while later that day, I finally got around to looking up the bird. Easy to find from the pictures: a great crested flycatcher. Cool! I, of course, couldn't get a pic of it, but here's one I snagged off the internet (from some random Alabama website):

It's a very nice looking bird. I saw two more, later that day.

Anyway, the book said that it has a "curious habit" of lining its nests with shed snake skins. Who'd have thought? Sunday night we had a crazy big storm that knocked down a bunch of branches from the trees. I was looking up at the nest boxes to see if I could see any activity and what to my wondering eyes did appear?

Yup, that's snake skin (middle bottom, if you're having difficulty). How cool is that? And how cool that my book totally told me to expect this. I think this confirms that these guys are using the nests, as the snake skin was not there before. But, really, it calls into question whether there was a snake in my yard that shed or if the birds brought it over and dropped it. It could be either way, really.