Box Four Family In Your Face!

The 5 youngsters are quite well, and as the box has a hole I am able to photograph through, this is what I saw:

They may be ready to fly out by next week. The other boxes seem to be a little slower in coming along. The box with two well developed young was a bit of a mystery. See my previous post on them. They were gone! The unhatched egg was still there. I am a bit unsure if they fledged. But with only two being fed, perhaps they grew fast.

On the North side, Box 13, unlucky two years in a row, lost all eggs this May. But there are four more eggs in it:

Box 16 on the North has four nestlings. They were a bit lethargic, and I did not see the parents around. It took some effort to determine that they were breathing. Let's give them a 60% chance to survive. I will see that box first thing next week.

Box Four Family coming along nicely

The five young hatched a week ago, and here is the mother coming out of the box. She had no food, she just wanted to check the chicks after I opened the box.

The young are fine inside. They had opened their eyes so they ignored me and did not raise their heads.

The dad is subduing a caterpillar on a post here, and brought it to the kids a few seconds later:

The female checks chicks

On the South side there are other nests with eggs and one with two young. They are the oldest chicks we have. Near feathered. The third egg never hatched:

On the North side, only Box 16 has four young, some pinfeathers but younger than the South side, eyes maybe closed.

This is their home. I put fancier numbers on these, so I can monitor the ones in the middle easier. I do not open many swallow boxes. But none had hatched. Too cold for a week.

Four active nests with two having hatched chicks! But a small disaster...

The box I posted a picture of last time (13) on the North side had four eggs a week ago, Now all four eggs are gone. If it is the same pair as last year (or sometimes on of their offspring), they had the same thing happen last year! House sparrows and wrens are suspect. The pair last year tried three times and raised at least two chicks.

On the North side one other box has four bluebird eggs. The nests with swallows active around had very few eggs yet. It tends to be a tight two weeks when they all decide to nest.

On the South side we had a nest with four bluebird eggs:

They all hatched but looked exhausted. I can't even see the bills.

Another pair decided to go with 3 eggs. So we have 5+3 and 8 is actually good for two boxes.

I was there at 8AM. They look exhausted, hatched the day before because the shells are gone. One bill is pointing right. The birds do not mind me opening the box and whatever part of the day, the parents immediately return to feeding as soon as I leave. Other nesting birds may be more particular, so if you have birds in your yard, best to get to a routine checking the nest.

These four pairs are going to be my bluebirds, the disaster nest will probably move to the empty box next door. I fully expect a fifth pair to nest in May.

Several full clutches of Bluebird eggs

The pair on the North side, if it is the same pair, had a bit of bad luck last summer, but eventually raised at least two nestlings. Now they have a full set of four eggs in the box, where it was just one egg a week ago.

Swallows allowed me to check a few nests. Some had more than three eggs, but none I found had the full 5-7 eggs. Cool weather and less insects times their egg laying and incubation.

Bluebirds nesting

I'm not going to photograph each egg this time, but I will get as many photos of the chicks as I can. On the South side two sets of eggs are full. Box 4 even has five. I will keep an eye on that for a week.

The other boxes had swallow nests, but only found a partial clutch in one. I will need to get a better list of the boxes with swallows nesting in them next time.