Three Bluebird Nests

I dealt with the three mouse nests, discovered a month ago. It takes about a month for the naked babies to grow and be old enough to survive and move on the ground. See the adult mouse and smaller pup in the previous post.

Two nests are perfectly normal, one with one egg, one with four.

All the eggs are near white in all the boxes, but swallows do not have eggs yet (several nests built) and are clearly smaller as well.

The third nest was the odd one. One egg in the nest but two broken eggs on the ground. Swallows may fight for a box but do now break eggs. This is the work o house wrens, which have nested in these boxes at this stretch of the South side last year. They nest more past July than now. But are very possessive of hole nests in their territory.

The North side had the usual swallow nests but only one likely Bluebird nest with no eggs.

At least one nest for Bluebirds

I checked the boxes that had the mouse nests, and the problem is, all had mouse pups in them. So those will not be available for bluebirds. Checking again mid May.

The two brand new boxes had nothing, but at a nearby box, there was one fully built nest with no eggs. There have been eggs in April in a few years, and some of those even hatched and survived, but on the whole, April eggs are a risk of failure here.

Swalllow have settled on who gets what box and have put some grass and feathers in a few boxes. Swallow eggs do not come till mid May.

Here are the deermice that were in 3 boxes.

Migrating shorebirds during the last snow storm

There is not much happening with bluebirds yet. I will check the boxes for nesting materials next week. Meanwhile...in a pond on the North side, not Pioneers park, a different marsh:

We had a bit of snow so I went to see if there was any fallout of migrating birds. In a storm they just land at the nearest pond. Not a huge number of species but some 30 godwits and 15 lesser yellowlegs.

For these photos, click the photo for a larger version:

A bit of video