Five active nests through most of July

There are nests out there and the bluebirds are doing fine with no interference. I did put some grease on the poles of the active nests. I really don't have much reason to check them every week, but will nevertheless check them in a week. Due to the wren guard experiment. See below.

South side Box 4
The most successful pair are raising four, with four already fledged. The female brooded the young over the cool night. By 8 30 AM she had gone to "work."

Box 10
These are also a successful pair, now with four young getting pinfeathers.

Box 7 also had three young but I cannot find the photo.

Also on the south side were 6 young WRENS, with pointy bills.

NORTH SIDE

The pair in Box 13 ( I took wren sticks out once) built a nest and laid eggs for the THIRD TIME. Two eggs are there. The commitment to the eggs and the box allows one to take some safety measures to take care of wrens interfering. They break and remove eggs.

I put a home made wren guard. Do not attach one until there are eggs. It is supposed to hide the hole of the nest. Wrens and nearly all song birds act mostly by instinct. Certain behavior follows an observation. The wren sees the hole, it must go in! So this (and commercial products) is what people have come up with.

You cover the top so the hole does not show. The bluebirds will fly in from underneath. They do not lose track of the nest. I have to  check it in a week or after heavier rain. it will stand some rain.

The wrens have not destroyed hatched young, in my observations. You can take the cover off at that point.

We have...NEW LIFE!

(Click the photos for a bigger view)
Box 10 on the South side is easily checked from the path, and there have strangely been no wrens bothering this box ever. Perhaps because there were tree swallows next door for weeks.

I tried to take a bit of video, but since food did not come, he no longer would lift his head:

There are three fuzzy heads, if you check carefully. I check the South side 14 boxes by bike, though I have not gone past 10, since 14 likely has no new eggs. One box had wrens. I leave those alone if they have a nest or eggs. Will do a final check on boxes 11-14 in a week.

Other pairs were around, and they too have eggs, so we have now four active boxes.

North Side

The pair from Box 13 is giving it one more try, after losing two clutches. With the wren sticks removed, they made a normal grass nest.

Once in a while, I catch something worth while if I have the camera with me. Today a Grasshopper Sparrow:

Don't count your eggs before they hatch?

It's chickens I know, or chicks. But we'll just deal with eggs now.

OK, we have 13 bluebirds fledged. And there are new eggs in three nests. One has three, the other two have four. None of these are near where we have wren activity.

Well, we are going to count anyway. If all the eggs are successful, we will get a total of 24 bluebirds, which is then normal for these boxes for a year.

Still hesitant nesting

A pair of bluebirds (female here on Box 8) managed to raise one young almost without me counting it as a bluebird, in the middle of swallow nest attempts:

Swallows have raised their young and several boxes (still rather few) are ready to go soon:

And the remaining three Bluebirds (two below) in two boxes are also ready.

On the minus side, the two "napping" last week may have been in their last few hours (they were breathing) and died. The birds get no water other than in food. Caterpillars are often the food.

Bad May

So we are just now recovering from a bad cold May. About 24-30 swallows will fledge, and Bluebirds will add up to 13 in a week.  That's actually a bad number for swallows, and I do not have really good data year to year, but up to 60 from 15-20 or so nests is normal.

Rather Uncertain June nesting

What is going on? With possibly 14 bluebirds total, this could be the worst of four seasons I have run this project. Even when cold killed whole broods of bluebird young, they renested.

The typical timetable is here: Timetable

The remaining bluebird activity is just two nests with two young, such as these two that were at least breathing.

Odd to see one on its back but it was breathing. This nest had four eggs but only two made it to this stage. One nest on the North side keeps having four eggs in the box and the female was incubating. I wonder how long they will sit on eggs if nothing comes out of it? In the next 4 days the 14 day incubation is done. If they do hatch and raise four, then our total could be 18 raised and close to the 20-25 we expect.

TREE SWALLOWS

These were a bit odd as well. The parents are attentive and fly in and out of boxes. One pair seemed to be having well feathered young but I found two in the box today and they were not ready to leave. What happened to up to five?

what I am seeing a whole range of nests at this point. Where they should be:

Two odd nests with just one chick (this one was a bluebird) :

The box next door had one swallow, And a couple of boxes with just one or two eggs.

All in all it has been a poor  May for Swallows. Normally they pick up and succeed, even if late. Now many have just given up. The North side with the ponds and insects very close by is doing worse than the South side where the boxes are along a path. There is a creek there, no pond.

Success! 10 have fledged!

The box on the North side is empty, so now 10 have fledged.

One other bluebird nest on the North side has four eggs. On the South side a lot of activity, mostly swallows. But one pair of bluebirds decided to raise just two chicks, and another have three hatched, one does not show up. The fourth is an egg.

Swallow nests, up to 7 chicks, always look crowded:

Optimistically 10 young bluebirds will have fledged in a week

The Box 4 family took a risk, raising 5 young while others hesitated. Four of the five fledged a few days ago. The fifth, presumably the runt, did not make it. The blue feathers had started to grow, but there were obvious deficiencies and the bird was small.

The female parent is feeding the fledged young, she had food at one point, I just did not find the young.

On the North side, four are ready to fledge (Box 16) as can be seen

I presume two more fledged earlier on the South side, bringing the total to 10 with the four above.

Other bluebirds are at the egg stage. One nest on the South side had disappearing eggs and I have determined it to be a house wren at work. He put his sticks in the box.

Swallows are coming along finally, with three nests having hatched chicks. This nest caused some confusion for me, but with the feathers I presume it is swallows. It is too early for wrens.

The door flips forward, and as I had it open and no birds dive bombed, I took a picture. I rarely photograph the swallow nestlings. I will check it in a week, just to see some sign of swallow developing. They look large for just a few days old. Swallow nestlings out of the egg are very small.

Adult tree sallow near one box with young.