North Side Boxes

The boxes on the North side are scattered across the small area of the prairie in this picture.

They are along the foot paths mowed into the prairie, in pairs. Many were chosen by tree swallows, one by blue birds. A few of them were empty, as two pairs of tree sawllows will not nest 10-20 feet apart.

There was a box near the parking lot, only used by house sparrows.

A few boxes had just ended up in bad spots, so I had collected about 4 by the school house, just to put them somewhere. Two of those were moved along the service road that I have marked "new boxes", as well as the parking lot box. Two remain close to the school.

Two new locations (highlighted by frame):

The third one is by the last mowed path off the service road. It will get a pair from the main area, probably one near the creek and log house.

 This is where it is, in the back (to the right of this path):

Fall Maintenance Started

South Side Boxes

There is a new gravel road on the South side. All these bluebird boxes can be seen next spring from the bike pedestrian path, whereas the area was closed to the public in the 2016 nesting season. I did see one bluebird today, and we even had a few at the last Christmas bird count.

I started some repairs and minor moves on the South side 14 boxes. The first box as you cross the (old) bridge was moved to a new pole. I left the old rusty pole there as I was out there by bike (bikes are not allowed on the foot path, leave them at the gravel) . It is of no use and will be removed.

This box had bluebirds nesting earlier, so I did not want to move it too far so they or their offspring can find it. The other box to its left was taken out as it lacks proper clamps. So now there are two empty poles in that first part. Moving along, box 5 looked terrible and had ants last June so I scrapped it and put a new box.

The pole is rusted but seemed solid enough. Some poles are rusted and have no rebar metal rod, they all will fall over easily and need to be replaced within a year or two.

At the middle, going to Coyote point, one box was part time under water last June so I moved it up to the ridge. The first picture has a square to show where it was. The second shows the two on the ridge now.

At the far end I moved one box, which last had swallows, so that it is now on the right. The left box was not moved, mainly because it had bluebirds at that location.

These were both badly behind sumac plants and far into the grass, They could be reached from the back trail, but that tends to get overgrown, so they can now be accessed from the gravel road, though a good 40 feet into the grass. Here the box needs to be a bit far out, as the tall trees can't be too close. The job of moving was the worst of the day, a good 10 minutes of pulling and turning effort as I have no power tools to do any of this, The rebar was pounded back by hammer and the pole goes over it:

Finally, I hauled the old box out by bike. I can carry just one box.

Total Bluebirds raised: 22

The South side nest with the 1 egg in June and 3 eggs last time did not produce any more nestlings. 10 days later there are still 3 eggs in it. The birds are gone, the nest is abandoned. I had thought they might have raised another brood in 5 weeks, but it is unlikely.

The last nestling from 10 days ago successfully left, giving us a total of 22 bluebirds raised in the boxes we provided. I am counting 4 nestlings from Box 2. Plus 3 earlier in May June.

This is the last bird this year.

July Fledged Up To Seven More Birds

South Side

(The number turned out to be less than 7, only 4)
The nest boxes on the North Side by the Nature Center have had little new activity. The remainder of the swallows fledged after June 7, when I last checked them. There were no bluebirds left on the North Side.

June-July continued with one egg to start with in in Box 7 on the South Side. There were three new eggs there now, a third brood. We can just guess that four fledged in that time as they had to wait till now to lay the third brood.

Box 2 had some tragedy with first ants and then the one dead nestling on June 7. The pair laid another brood and raised them in June-July. There were two nearly full grown birds in the box, so up to two fledged without me seeing them, and one left in the hour it took me to check boxes. The remaining nestling in Box 2 is shown here.

It looks normal though maybe a bit on the small side.

Heat

Birds seems to handle heat well. The parents need to feed them all day, as the food is the only source of water for birds. I saw one parent still hanging around at 1-2 PM. They may feed them more as the heat eases by evening  and it is less work to find food.

Fledglings Gone Out To The World

Thanks for following the blog for all of May. I can happily announce that all the bluebirds, save for a few tragedies, have fledged and there is at least one egg laid for a second nesting. I will monitor the nests through the summer but there will be no blog entries for the rest of June as I have other duties to attend to. I am just a volunteer for the bluebird boxes. I may have one entry to cover the second nests in July.

Here are the last two empty boxes. I cleaned out one a bit, the other is as it was.

 

From these two fledged six nestlings. The small sibling of the right side box did not make it. He was fully feathered but maybe the wings would not carry him. At the last point his wing looked like this:

Ants

Ants will be a problem throughout the warm months. Most birds have the sense to not continue with a nest once ants invade a box. One pair of swallows built a complete nest and lined with feathers but laid no eggs. I cleaned that box of the ants and left the door propped open so no birds will try to nest there now. My count is that ants took over three nests out of 30. I cleaned out and took anti-ant measures on two as they were active nests.

With some duct tape I could ant proof it but it still had some ant eggs inside.

Swallows

All the swallow eggs have hatched. Some 50 swallow nestlings are being fed right now.

The swallows seem to have a whole different strategy to eggs and nestlings. They have up to 6-7 eggs and the eggs do not hatch at the same time as do blue bird eggs. Blue bird nestlings have all been the same at the start and some did not make it as they were not as active at grabbing food as their siblings. The swallow eggs are perhaps not all incubated equally so they may have eggs hatch 1 or 2 days after the rest. I do not have any books on the swallows, but just common sense says that not all 6 nestlings will make it in that situation. I have a picture that shows at least six nestlings and one is clearly some two days behind the rest. On the left, the ugly duckling/alien, more yellow and smaller than the rest. It was moving and active, so there was nothing wrong with it, but I think this one hatched just hours ago.

Outside, the typical scene is like this, with two parents active. Some nests I have never seen inside, I just hear some noise and at this point the parents dive bomb my head and I retreat.

A Good Egg

It's a song by Leo Kottke. A Good Egg. But here is our one new egg. The parents already raised 4-5 from the first nest.

Bluebirds (18) vs Swallows (60-70)

Eggs and Nestlings

We had a total of 5 nest boxes with bluebirds. Of these we will get about 18 young to fledge, then there may be a second nesting. I think the North Side pair may move to a less central box, as there are a few boxes with no nests. But based on what we have in the boxes now, nestlings and eggs, it looks like there are 18 bluebirds to more than 60 swallows that will fledge within a month.

The swallows, all but one nest, seem to be having eggs hatch just about now, all within 3-4 days. The one South Side box I even have access to had a female on the eggs, She would not need to brood the nestlings in this heat during this heat, so I think she has eggs. They too will hatch this week. The nestlings are hard to photograph due to the pile of feathers in most nests, but here are new swallow nestlings a day or two old:

They are bit smaller than bluebird nestlings as often there are 6-7 eggs.

The south side gang with the half sized male bird (more blue) were happily napping. He likes to sleep on top. They were not starving so for some mysterious reason he is small. I think he has no idea at this point he will be struggling. If you look carefully, you can see his wing feathers are not all fully developed, parts of some are at the pin stage. His siblings have been feathered for days now and will fledge before the week is over.

Two Oddball Nests

North Side

On the North side, some very aggressive mowing took place for the Memorial Weekend when lots of people come to the park. It may be the mowing activity that kept the three bluebirds in the North Side box from fledging. It looks like one fledged so the other two will go soon. Tomorrow would be better than today. Two were staring at me. I have not run across a partial fledge before. All the other boxes fledged all in one day.

A quick check of three swallow nests showed one full clutch hatched. They were even tinier than bluebirds and buried in feathers the parents line the nest with. The box is on the way to the log cabin so you may see nestlings begging for food in a week from the box with the moss on top.

South Side

Here we have the box saved from ants ten days or more ago. All four nestlings were the same then (left photo), whereas we now have three normal sized nestlings and one runt. Due to the unusual situation I woke all four to make sure all were alive. The runt held on for dear life, grabbing the back feathers of a sibling. I am not sure how parents deal with this. Will they feed the small one after the other three fledge until it is normal size? It has feathers and may be able to fly a little in a week, but will not do well outside the box.

The one sibling was fully aware of me the whole time, two had to be awoken. Here he is peeking under wing.

Three Nests Left With Nestlings

North Side

On the North side, in less than a week, these three nestilings will leave the box. I finally saw the male feeding the nestlings as well. So it was not one parent. I suspect that there was some problem incubating and laying 5 eggs, so the first two nestlings may have hatched but if they were not quite as normal as the other three, they would have lost out on food. The three are now well feathered.

On the North side, one box of swallows fledged and the other swallows are not even close to having chicks hatch. The advanced nest has been left alone a week so I cleaned it out a bit, leaving most of the nest and feathers, One egg never hatched.

South Side

On the South side, the nestlings of Box 2 were sleepy. They are a few days behind the birds of the previous photo.

The male of this nest decided to aggressively sit on top of a swallow nest next door. The swallows even knocked him off the box once with aerial attacks. He held out some five minutes. The swallows have 4-5 eggs in the left box.

I have one more box of nestlings out there, The road currently looks like this and is a field of mud.

Somehow I got to the box half way to Coyote point and the nestlings are fine, four of them.

I won't be able to see them again or the empty box in a week, it is just too hard to get to it now.

North Side Trio

The only nest of bluebirds on the North side were  hungry on Thursday. They were about 5 days old then, on the left. They appear to have grown well and feathers are coming out. This is day 9 (right photo) and they are more alert when you follow their eyes but at this time were sleepy.

About half done

South Side

On the South side, Box 7 has fledged as well. So we have two nests that successfully fledged and two that still have nestlings less than a week old. The empty Box 7 on the right.

Also on the South side are very similar nests, Box 2 that I saved from the ants last time:

They look content and fed around noon. Then there is Box 9 that has about four nestlings the same:

I only ran into the mom of that box once, but most likely both parents are there. On the North side it is a different matter.

North side

The nest box is near the nature center. For two weeks it had four eggs. Then it had 5 and a female on eggs. Then it had at least four nestlings. Now it has three. I interpret this as a very possible single parent feeding three nestlings. At noon they were still hungry and begging food. Nestlings are more alert to sound and movement when they are hungry.

There are numerous swallow nests with eggs on the North side. Then there is one box that keeps getting filled up with sticks. This is the work of a male house wren:

There was no nest. I decided to remove the entire box. The wren was likely to interfere with the swallows nesting next door. I though this would discourage the wren from hanging out at all. Wrens are small birds and usually find a natural hole to nest in. We probably have 100 house wrens in Wilderness park. They will nest in back yards as well.

Both Bluebirds and Swallows Fledge

Leaving the nest

The first nestful, Box 13 of my previous posts, fledged sometime this week. On the 14th I found just an empty nest and a few ants were taking over. With a bit of a mess I decided to remove the nest and took some measures to keep the ants out. If they want to renest, they need to build again. On 4/21 I found the female on eggs, on 5/3 I found nestlings hatched, and on 5/15 they have gone through their entire childhood.

Box 7 on the South side has some 4 nestlings ready to fledge any day. I have three bills coming to the top to get food but I think four are inside:

When I open the front I always see two faces and I can see some more hiding, This is the first I see of the blue feathers.

South Side also has Box 2 coming along at a very early stage, day 2 or 3 with eyes closed. I had to take a whole cleaning operation to get rid of ants there. Nestlings were fine.

I counted four bills. The box pole now has reversed duct tape to keep ants going up the pole.

North Side Swallows

A nestful of tree swallows, four, fledged as soon as I looked in the box. One of them kept coming to the box later. It looks odd, no sign of tree swallow, mostly gray, and the bill even looks wrong. Yet, white eggs and feathers point to swallow. I do not know how long swallows feed fledged young.

The box is in the prairie behind the nature center with the pond behind.

No bluebirds other than one box are on the North Side. Up by the school are four boxes. The box up front has swallow eggs and one not 20 feet behind also has a few eggs.

The school bell tower has noisy black birds, I think starlings. They like to nest about 15 feet or higher. 

Nestlings: Cute ugly furry balls with eyes closed

One more picture of the only North side bluebirds, less than 6 days after hatching There have been five so far. Three necks are up and one rear end. Their wings and feet have no real strength so getting yourself upright in a crowded nest takes a while.