I am no longer doing the Pioners Park nest boxes. There are certainly Tree Swallows again. At least one nest with eggs.
On the South Side in a box that was mostly House Wrens by July a pair is nesting. The eggs have hatched days ago. I had a peek. (don't do this if you do not have supplies, like an extra nail).
Both of the parents were seen bringing in green larvae. The box is shown below.
Adrian, another master naturalist is taking care of the bluebird boxes from now on. I will not know for a while how many pairs nested. But at least two, I think. I have no way to follow them from egg to hatch to fledge anymore.
Sep 2024: texted Adrian and we estimated 7 fledged birds for the 2024 summer.
I had thought the one nest in 2022 might be the low point of our nesting years. There was a winter time disaster in the SW where millions of birds, including bluebirds, died a few years back. East coast bluebirds may not have been affected, but ours were. No, the low point was this May. There were no Bluebirds. There has been local drought, so the Tree Swallows were down too. Maybe only half the boxes were in use. Some swallows stay in the area with the boxes even though the young have left.
Strangely the nesting was rather uneven for them. They tend to be rather uniform from box to box for several weeks. Here we had a grown nestling (alone) in a box...
....and a clutch just hatched not even a week ago in one box. The majority of Tree Swallows had finished, with only a few dud eggs left.
The nest boxes were not cleaned out other than a few that were opened. I am not going to continue this volunteer job for Pioneers Park for 2024. Someone else will take over.
This is pretty much the end of the blog. I will keep it open and may add one more photo in 2024 or 2025. Hopefully there will be some signs of recovery. I did see a few bluebirds in the county this spring but not really many. When visiting Missouri, a few more there than here in Lancaster county. The Eastern Bluebirds from the Mississippi river to the East Coast have been doing better, they did not suffer the SW US disaster several years ago.
ADDED 6.13.23
Swallows still in box, a few pairs taking care of grown birds.
The sole nest box that had any Eastern Bluebirds is now empty. I did not see the young or the parents. The pair raised 7 young in two clutches. From a week ago:
The box was one with a hole so I had to open it every time to check the nestlings. The slotted nest boxes are easier to check.
I did not see all the nestlings last time, but there were several. One was puffed up and covered the ones asleep.
Two have fledged and two are left. They should leave by the end of the week. You can see the blue on the feathers. The tail gets a little longer and flight feathers grow a bit more.
Swallow nestlings are very similar until the bill gets longer, when birds are about a week old. But they never get the blue, they are gray in the box. Tree swallows as adults can have a bluish tint, but not when in the box.
(Note: only 5 have fledged by 7.11) There was only one nesting pair. That pair raised 6-7, the total for all the boxes. There was this one left in the box, awake. As it turned out it covered one or more siblings. See entry for 7.11.
I've been limiting these summer visits due to pests I need to avoid. I did check them today, and the eggs still have not hatched. They have been there at least 11 days. Incubation is normally 12-14 days. Then 15 more days in the box.
The pair on the South side that raised three young left the box empty for a while. I checked that and the one next door. No swallows had taken that one all thru May. Since the box was cleaned and empty, they built a nest in the same box where two young died. This rarely happens, they usually move.
I have not seen the parents but once. This is the female.
I will check the box again about two weeks from now, as the pests in the prairie get worse now. I don't feel like walking much through grass. But in two weeks we should have partly grown young, probably eyes open but not much past that. If it goes long past that, I will check once in July.
I checked four boxes around where the single flock of Bluebirds was raised. No new nest was found.
I had worried about the fate of several nests in the burn area (see previous post). Checked two likely boxes. It looks like the swallow chicks survived. They may have been eggs during the burn, so there may be no smoke risk.
Swallows are finishing up nesting. These birds are ready to go in a week. You can see full body feathers and quite alert birds, usually 5-7.
They are not ready to fly but are flapping wings. You can see the tip of the wing feather going from pin feather to full feather.
The birds I saw on Monday all seemed alert, but I probably saw only three. I had a final check today and there were three fledged but two remained behind, now dead. We had two days of cold weather.
This box is on the South side. It is one of the Xs here. It has an empty box next to it that swallows showed interest in. But did not nest in. I will need to see if the pair that fledged 3 will feel the need to renest. They will nest in the other X, not the box that had two die.
The hatched area had a prairie burn a week ago. Rather late. It may have produced smoke that affected chicks. I have not checked the swallow nests that are in the burn area. There may be more dead chicks.
The tally for Bluebirds Across Nebraska will be 3 fledged. No nests on the North side by the Nature Center.
The chicks are fully grown. I had three birds staring at me, but could not capture that in a photo, as they would have flown out if I opened the door more. The photo through the hole shows the blue tails.
Mom bringing food:
Elsewhere in the park, mom Wood Duck with ducklings.
I have one broken nest box to take back in a week, but by then no bluebirds will be in nests.
The one nest with eggs has the five chicks now. Their eyes might be open, but they were asleep. Or at least the eyes will open within days. I did not think of getting more exciting pictures, so this may be all we see of them. In a week they will be almost grown and a week later fledged. No other nests found. 3-5 Swallow nests have eggs.
After a disastrous year in 2021, Bluebirds are back. There is one nest with 5 eggs so far. The Tree Swallows are selecting boxes and there are some half way finished nests with no eggs. They wait to the end of May but do claim the boxes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We had two boxes with mouse nests over the summer. One is empty, with maybe the start of a nest, but no mice:
The other one is getting to be in rather tall plants and has had the mouse since spring. I believe she may have had three litters there. She even carried the pups up the pole back to the box, when a couple of them jumped out. They were full grown in summer. Now she had another litter who are also almost grown:
I gave up on that. She can have the box forever. There are 31 other boxes for birds.
