After storms, nestlings are fine

South Side

The South side had some flooding and in fact one box with eggs is on a pole that is in a little water.There is incubation going on as I found th female in the box!

The road I need to walk on is quite flooded from all the rain.

The nestlings at the far end were staring at me and have quite a lot of body and wing feathers. This is Box 13, South side, my most advanced bluebirds.

The Box 7 family is getting feathered and eyes open but was not quite alert yet. Well, they just had lunch obviously.

  So we have four boxes with some kind of nest activity in the South but I have never seen the parents of the Box 2 eggs.

North Side

On the North side,four or five eggs just sat there for two weeks. Then over a week I did find the female on the eggs and there are now five new nestlings, just a few days old.

Also on the North side is a family with at lest three Swallow nestlings and one other box had two swallow eggs. Several boxes on the North side will have swallows, but they too will only occupy one of a pair of boxes. That is, you do not get two swallows nesting 10 feet apart in neighboring boxes. Possibly near the end of the brood another swallow pair can take over the 10 feet away box.

The swallow nestlings were quite alert. I had to hold down some lining feathers to get a picture. I first found them 8 days ago and they resembled the ones in the bluebird picture above.

Getting Wild

The South end,closed to the public, has a different feel now. Grass is not mowed off the path and I found this in the West end of the Ben V trail. Great horned owls are doing extra hunting. Their young have fledged but are still being fed mice by the parents.