Cleaning out boxes and new numbers on North Side

I moved a few boxes in the fall to the service road behind the school house and the boxes had odd numbering in any case. My improvement was to number them along the route in the order I normally check them. The numbers are a bit conspicuous but I can also get a picture of parents and nestlings with a numbered box now. There were no bluebirds today. Box 5 shows the example of the new numbering.

A few boxes are now unpaired, such as 15 which was moved out of the way of Prairie Jazz and the last box, number 18. That is behind these two along the service road.

I will see some bluebirds around the boxes by March. Three pairs typically on the South side. it will be interesting to see if we get more bluebirds on the North side than last year, now that the boxes are a bit more away from people paths. The tree swallows do not seem to mind people. They fly over the ponds for the insect food so this North side is convenient for them.

I moved a box off the parking lot area that had house sparrows. The house sparrows will claim maybe one box near the Nature Center. They also fight for the purple martin houses on the tall pole.