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.

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.

Update on three nest boxes

Bluebirds 

What are bluebirds? When my son was in scouts I would walk around the camp and always find bluebirds with binoculars. The scout master could see "something blue" but claimed he had never seen a bluebird. He did not use binoculars. It is a small bird, a thrush. Like the European Robin, it is in the thrush family, but typical thrushes such as American Robin, Fieldfare, Redwing and our wood thrushes are bigger. As a thrush it eats insects, caterpillars, worms, fruit but not seeds or grain. 

The female bluebird is blue and orange as well, but paler colored. This is the mom of our Box 13 family.

Here are the male and female for comparison. Click the photo for some enlargement.

Young birds have a streaky spotty look. In the fall they often have the orange breast put have a pale color on top where the adults are blue. (Possibly these are females, as many young have blue from the start). They should be fully blue and orange before they are a year old and will nest and mate at one year age.

South Side Boxes

We have two nests with nestlings and two with four eggs. For some reason those females have not laid the fifth egg. At that point they would sit on the eggs and I would know they are incubating and nestlings are coming along.

The Box 13 family is coming along nicely and the nestlings have the feathers appearing in stick like form. The full feather starts to unfold. The bill is still partly yellow but the tip is getting like the adult bill. The feathers on the head are more like fur. There seem to be at least four. They raised their heads but lost interest in me and went to sleep.

The Box 7 nestlings are several days behind.

Swallows

Swallow nestlings on the North side are about the same stage as the Box 13 nestlings of bluebirds, but they made calling sounds as I opened the door, expecting mom and dad with food. Then they too lost interest. They will be screaming for food for most of the day soon enough and not sleeping so much. The tip of the bill again has lost its original yellow and will be a longish swallow bill with a wide gape.

 

Bluebird Timetable

Since I don't make money off this, I've just borrowed a timetable from Sialis.org. Some technical feather terms but it gives you a general idea.

Egg Laying 5-7 days, One egg each

Incubation 12-14 days

Hatching, followed by

• Day 1: dingy gray down, eyes closed. The babies heads look huge. Their wings are nubs, and legs are weak and spindly. Uncoordinated, raising head weakly and unsteadily, faint vocalizations.
• Day 2: contour feathers start to develop. Soft gray down is now along the edges of wings, the head and spine. The skin beneath looks blue-black as feathers begin to develop beneath it.
• Day 3: femoral tract feathers begin emerging.
• Day 4: wings are dark.
• Day 5: feathers appear in crural region. Eyes open day 5-6. While sleeping, head held limply in front or curled to side.
• Day 7-8: able to maintain body temperature.
• Day 8: secondary wing-coverts break out of sheaths.
• Day 9: capital feathers, secondaries and retrices are out of sheaths; birds use bill to work all major feather tracts. Nestlings may show fear if handled, can crawl. Yawning first observed. May lay head on scapulars while sleeping.
• Day 10-11: most capital-tract feathers emerge.
• Day 11: Feather sheaths start to disintegrate (leaving a white dust behind) and wing feathers begin to emerge. Nestcams indicate nestlings start to stand up at this age. Nestlings start to preen, pulling at the sheaths of emerging feathers.They may flap wings, stretch and hop a little to strengthen muscles.
• Day 12: almost completely feathered. except for mid-ventral region. Incomplete bill-wiping movements and head scratching first observed.
• Day 13: Mid-ventral region is feathered. sleep with head on scapulars. Can tell sex by bright blue color of primaries and retrices, and white on retrices. Sleep in typical adult manner.
• Day 14: no unfeathered areas visible. Wings are longer. Capable of weak, short-distance flight. Bird can right itself and make short shuffling movements backwards and forwards.
• Day 15: completely feathered. Nestlings huddle together, preen, exercise, stand on edge of nest and look out of nest cavity.
• Day 16: able to hop well by day 16. During final days in nest, nestlings flap wings vigorously.

Fledging Day 17-18

Survival

Sparrows

In our neighborhood I found a bluebird box with sparrows in it. About a week ago there were three nestlings in it. Yesterday there was one barely alive and today nothing. The parents remove the nestlings that do not survive. Sparrows can feed on seeds but they feed their nestlings insects and caterpillars. Last week was a cool week. They had to survive themselves to try nesting again.

Sparrow's nests are often round shaped with a a roof over and just the opening on the side. I believe that was the same box. I checked them all in that section and none had nestlings. One box actually had five bluebird eggs but they mysteriously disappeared, all but one, over one day. Yes, there are other birds that eat eggs. These boxes are cleaned out once a year by someone. They are in no way ideal for bluebirds, being so close to a bike path. But some use may come of them. at least house sparrow nests.

Bluebirds

Our South side birds are doing well. It looked like whatever work on the trail (with bulldozers) had gone on was wrapping up.

 In what I call Box 13 are five nestlings. The mom never left the nest on previous visits but on a warm day like today the nestlings were alone, content from the morning feedings and sleeping. In fact the dad came by with food and nobody responded so he ate it himself. The dad is in some brush not far from the nest:

Here is the mom on the nest when she still had eggs.  

 

And the resting nestlings. The Box 13 family.  I think we are at day 4 or 5.

There will more pictures of the Box 7 family soon enough, There was a similar clutch inside. Here is just the box. I have never seen the female but she kept the eggs warm through the cold spell. I have a picture of the empty grass nest from it in the previous blog, look back.

The birds seem to like the compact boxes. Some bigger boxes are available and some brand new. One more box (2) had five eggs in the South end. So we are expecting up to 15 nestlings on the South side (now locked at the bridge)

Swallows

Swallows were fighting over Box 1 on the South side and Box 11 on the North side. Up to three males circle the box, land, go inside and so and. This is just to show to a female that "I have a nest box". I believe he does not make any nests. 

The surprise of the week was a swallow's nest with nestlings when all the other swallow nests do not even have eggs in them. Among the feathers (sign of swallow nest) were some sleeping nestlings. 

The swallows must have found enough insects to feed the nestlings and themsleves. In bad weather, bluebirds can find berries. I think these swallows may be able to eat some vegetable matter as well. Of all the swallows, these are the most song bird like and have feet to land and walk on unlike useless barn swallow feet. In the swallow category, I found a dead male in a box. The birds roost in empty boxes all year, This one was probably old or sick. I have to remove some dead things once in a while. If eggs start to rot they have to be taken out.

All in all, life goes on. People running bluebird nest box lines have always been impressed that they seem to plan well and rarely abandon eggs and never nestlings. It is all  a matter of survival and doing your job. People that study bluebirds say they live one or two years and very few nest and live to the third year. They make the most of it.