Wrens Have Moved In

There are many swallows still nesting with 1-7 day old chicks. I did not check them all. The Bluebirds have pretty much disappeared. The one pair attempting to nest on the South side made a brief appearance near one box, but even that box has wren eggs now.

With so many empty boxes, because the swallows are also down to close to half the number last year, the wrens have moved in early. At least 5 boxes out of 32 have wrens. One had hatched young, the other four were at this stage. It is a bit early, as the wrens nest in about this number but normally in July.

There is really nothing I can do. I would either need to close the boxes or remove them all after the end of May. It is the job of any Bluebirds next spring to fight with the wrens for the boxes again.

Four Birds Left Box

 I was hoping to get another photo of the bluebirds, more developed. if you look at the last photo, you can see that the front bird has pinfeathers, and the back birds is more feathered. So very likely at least three birds were able to fly when they left. It was still very early, they could have stayed several more days.

If you look at last year, for example, the birds should have very little or no yellow on the bill when they leave the box:

SWALLOWS

About half the sallows have chicks like this (asleep, can't see bills), well feathered. Half have just hatched chicks or eggs. I did not check very many.

There is not much to monitor, so I don't know if we are done or if there are more bluebirds to come. Next check will be in a week.

Bluebirds

 The four chicks on the North side are starting to look like bluebirds. Note the blue tint on the pinfeathered wing.

They are not house sparrow either as those look like this.

I opened a couple of swallow boxes and a few are still incubating eggs. I try not to bother the chicks, as I get attacked.

Bluebirds, or not Bluebirds?

 I have not determined that any nests are bluebirds for sure. There was one nest with four nestlings and feather lining. Swallows should have 5-7 nestlings. The chicks looked like this:

They looked like good sized birds and had eyes open. If they were swallows, they would start to look like this soon:

So we may very well have Bluebirds in a feather lined nest! The birds move around and fight over boxes at first, so some feathers may have been put in then.

Several swallow pairs have chicks, very young, I will leave most of those boxes alone. In a week you can see busy parents at this box on the Nature Center side. It can be seen from the gold course tree line.

The South side still has no bluebird nests. If we are lucky, we will get two pairs nesting with a total of 8 to 16 chicks. Normal is about 25.

It's not going well

 The Tree Swallows are at normal rate. There are at least three nests with 2-3 eggs. The nests will have 6-7 eggs. The Bluebirds however have not made successful nests. The only pair that I spotted last week lost their three eggs to the wren next door. They are now looking at this box, but no new nest was made.

That was on the South side. The North side has no Bluebird nests.

Nesting for 2021 has started

 The swallows are there, though not quite as active as last May. Cool weather. There are some 10 swallow nests, no eggs till a week or more. But the swallows are not the concern. The Bluebirds have been largely absent at Pioneers through the severe winter, and even after that I have seen very few.

I did see a glimpse of one bird today and there is one nest with eggs (3). Two other grass nests but no birds seen around them.

There were plenty of birds in 2016, then 2017 was a low year with four pairs nesting. Let's see how this year goes. In general Bluebird sightings are a half or so of previous years in eBird of Nebraska. Will we end up with just three pairs? Many years it was 7 pairs, some nesting twice.