Three Nests With Eggs!

First, I went to the Bluebird conference in Unadilla. These folks will set you up with bluebird nest boxes if you have semirural property or even on the edge of town facing farm fields. The website has instructions to order. http://www.bbne.org/

Now, the excitement is that we have three nests. I took this picture of a partial clutch, which was not being guarded by the parents. The female will begin to incubate with five eggs, usually.

This nest is on the North side near the Nature Center. if you see bluebirds on the way to the goose pond from the Nature Center, they may be the parents. They sit up on the fence usually.

On the South side there are two nests with eggs. You won't be able to see this activity because the bridge is now closed for construction. Down there, I found three nests, but one was just grass, and the swalows were sitting on those two boxes. No sign of bluebirds. They may have given up there.

Near the center of the Ben V trail, there are two occupied nests. One has five blue bluebird eggs and the other has a tree swallow nests with no eggs:

The one up front is the swallow nests and the bluebirds picked a similar box but lower down in elevation, in back, There was a flurry of bluebird and swallow activity on these, at least six swallows.

At the very far end the male is still guarding an empty box, my Box 14, while the female is on eggs at Box 13. She has a full clutch, as she refused to leave the nest so I could see how many eggs there are. You can see her tail sticking out to the left.

While it's good to keep track of nests and nestlings and do what we can to keep predators out, I won't be opening all the boxes once there is nesting going on. Some of them are a bit shaky and the door and nail are hard to work loose with birds inside. So we will take pictures from outside and also one or two of nestlings inside, but with minimal intrusion. Estimates of successful nests can be made without counting every egg and nestling.