Total Bluebirds raised: 22

The South side nest with the 1 egg in June and 3 eggs last time did not produce any more nestlings. 10 days later there are still 3 eggs in it. The birds are gone, the nest is abandoned. I had thought they might have raised another brood in 5 weeks, but it is unlikely.

The last nestling from 10 days ago successfully left, giving us a total of 22 bluebirds raised in the boxes we provided. I am counting 4 nestlings from Box 2. Plus 3 earlier in May June.

This is the last bird this year.

July Fledged Up To Seven More Birds

South Side

(The number turned out to be less than 7, only 4)
The nest boxes on the North Side by the Nature Center have had little new activity. The remainder of the swallows fledged after June 7, when I last checked them. There were no bluebirds left on the North Side.

June-July continued with one egg to start with in in Box 7 on the South Side. There were three new eggs there now, a third brood. We can just guess that four fledged in that time as they had to wait till now to lay the third brood.

Box 2 had some tragedy with first ants and then the one dead nestling on June 7. The pair laid another brood and raised them in June-July. There were two nearly full grown birds in the box, so up to two fledged without me seeing them, and one left in the hour it took me to check boxes. The remaining nestling in Box 2 is shown here.

It looks normal though maybe a bit on the small side.

Heat

Birds seems to handle heat well. The parents need to feed them all day, as the food is the only source of water for birds. I saw one parent still hanging around at 1-2 PM. They may feed them more as the heat eases by evening  and it is less work to find food.

Fledglings Gone Out To The World

Thanks for following the blog for all of May. I can happily announce that all the bluebirds, save for a few tragedies, have fledged and there is at least one egg laid for a second nesting. I will monitor the nests through the summer but there will be no blog entries for the rest of June as I have other duties to attend to. I am just a volunteer for the bluebird boxes. I may have one entry to cover the second nests in July.

Here are the last two empty boxes. I cleaned out one a bit, the other is as it was.

 

From these two fledged six nestlings. The small sibling of the right side box did not make it. He was fully feathered but maybe the wings would not carry him. At the last point his wing looked like this:

Ants

Ants will be a problem throughout the warm months. Most birds have the sense to not continue with a nest once ants invade a box. One pair of swallows built a complete nest and lined with feathers but laid no eggs. I cleaned that box of the ants and left the door propped open so no birds will try to nest there now. My count is that ants took over three nests out of 30. I cleaned out and took anti-ant measures on two as they were active nests.

With some duct tape I could ant proof it but it still had some ant eggs inside.

Swallows

All the swallow eggs have hatched. Some 50 swallow nestlings are being fed right now.

The swallows seem to have a whole different strategy to eggs and nestlings. They have up to 6-7 eggs and the eggs do not hatch at the same time as do blue bird eggs. Blue bird nestlings have all been the same at the start and some did not make it as they were not as active at grabbing food as their siblings. The swallow eggs are perhaps not all incubated equally so they may have eggs hatch 1 or 2 days after the rest. I do not have any books on the swallows, but just common sense says that not all 6 nestlings will make it in that situation. I have a picture that shows at least six nestlings and one is clearly some two days behind the rest. On the left, the ugly duckling/alien, more yellow and smaller than the rest. It was moving and active, so there was nothing wrong with it, but I think this one hatched just hours ago.

Outside, the typical scene is like this, with two parents active. Some nests I have never seen inside, I just hear some noise and at this point the parents dive bomb my head and I retreat.

A Good Egg

It's a song by Leo Kottke. A Good Egg. But here is our one new egg. The parents already raised 4-5 from the first nest.

Bluebirds (18) vs Swallows (60-70)

Eggs and Nestlings

We had a total of 5 nest boxes with bluebirds. Of these we will get about 18 young to fledge, then there may be a second nesting. I think the North Side pair may move to a less central box, as there are a few boxes with no nests. But based on what we have in the boxes now, nestlings and eggs, it looks like there are 18 bluebirds to more than 60 swallows that will fledge within a month.

The swallows, all but one nest, seem to be having eggs hatch just about now, all within 3-4 days. The one South Side box I even have access to had a female on the eggs, She would not need to brood the nestlings in this heat during this heat, so I think she has eggs. They too will hatch this week. The nestlings are hard to photograph due to the pile of feathers in most nests, but here are new swallow nestlings a day or two old:

They are bit smaller than bluebird nestlings as often there are 6-7 eggs.

The south side gang with the half sized male bird (more blue) were happily napping. He likes to sleep on top. They were not starving so for some mysterious reason he is small. I think he has no idea at this point he will be struggling. If you look carefully, you can see his wing feathers are not all fully developed, parts of some are at the pin stage. His siblings have been feathered for days now and will fledge before the week is over.

Two Oddball Nests

North Side

On the North side, some very aggressive mowing took place for the Memorial Weekend when lots of people come to the park. It may be the mowing activity that kept the three bluebirds in the North Side box from fledging. It looks like one fledged so the other two will go soon. Tomorrow would be better than today. Two were staring at me. I have not run across a partial fledge before. All the other boxes fledged all in one day.

A quick check of three swallow nests showed one full clutch hatched. They were even tinier than bluebirds and buried in feathers the parents line the nest with. The box is on the way to the log cabin so you may see nestlings begging for food in a week from the box with the moss on top.

South Side

Here we have the box saved from ants ten days or more ago. All four nestlings were the same then (left photo), whereas we now have three normal sized nestlings and one runt. Due to the unusual situation I woke all four to make sure all were alive. The runt held on for dear life, grabbing the back feathers of a sibling. I am not sure how parents deal with this. Will they feed the small one after the other three fledge until it is normal size? It has feathers and may be able to fly a little in a week, but will not do well outside the box.

The one sibling was fully aware of me the whole time, two had to be awoken. Here he is peeking under wing.

Three Nests Left With Nestlings

North Side

On the North side, in less than a week, these three nestilings will leave the box. I finally saw the male feeding the nestlings as well. So it was not one parent. I suspect that there was some problem incubating and laying 5 eggs, so the first two nestlings may have hatched but if they were not quite as normal as the other three, they would have lost out on food. The three are now well feathered.

On the North side, one box of swallows fledged and the other swallows are not even close to having chicks hatch. The advanced nest has been left alone a week so I cleaned it out a bit, leaving most of the nest and feathers, One egg never hatched.

South Side

On the South side, the nestlings of Box 2 were sleepy. They are a few days behind the birds of the previous photo.

The male of this nest decided to aggressively sit on top of a swallow nest next door. The swallows even knocked him off the box once with aerial attacks. He held out some five minutes. The swallows have 4-5 eggs in the left box.

I have one more box of nestlings out there, The road currently looks like this and is a field of mud.

Somehow I got to the box half way to Coyote point and the nestlings are fine, four of them.

I won't be able to see them again or the empty box in a week, it is just too hard to get to it now.

North Side Trio

The only nest of bluebirds on the North side were  hungry on Thursday. They were about 5 days old then, on the left. They appear to have grown well and feathers are coming out. This is day 9 (right photo) and they are more alert when you follow their eyes but at this time were sleepy.