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.