Cleaning out boxes and new numbers on North Side

I moved a few boxes in the fall to the service road behind the school house and the boxes had odd numbering in any case. My improvement was to number them along the route in the order I normally check them. The numbers are a bit conspicuous but I can also get a picture of parents and nestlings with a numbered box now. There were no bluebirds today. Box 5 shows the example of the new numbering.

A few boxes are now unpaired, such as 15 which was moved out of the way of Prairie Jazz and the last box, number 18. That is behind these two along the service road.

I will see some bluebirds around the boxes by March. Three pairs typically on the South side. it will be interesting to see if we get more bluebirds on the North side than last year, now that the boxes are a bit more away from people paths. The tree swallows do not seem to mind people. They fly over the ponds for the insect food so this North side is convenient for them.

I moved a box off the parking lot area that had house sparrows. The house sparrows will claim maybe one box near the Nature Center. They also fight for the purple martin houses on the tall pole.

North Side Boxes

The boxes on the North side are scattered across the small area of the prairie in this picture.

They are along the foot paths mowed into the prairie, in pairs. Many were chosen by tree swallows, one by blue birds. A few of them were empty, as two pairs of tree sawllows will not nest 10-20 feet apart.

There was a box near the parking lot, only used by house sparrows.

A few boxes had just ended up in bad spots, so I had collected about 4 by the school house, just to put them somewhere. Two of those were moved along the service road that I have marked "new boxes", as well as the parking lot box. Two remain close to the school.

Two new locations (highlighted by frame):

The third one is by the last mowed path off the service road. It will get a pair from the main area, probably one near the creek and log house.

 This is where it is, in the back (to the right of this path):

Fall Maintenance Started

South Side Boxes

There is a new gravel road on the South side. All these bluebird boxes can be seen next spring from the bike pedestrian path, whereas the area was closed to the public in the 2016 nesting season. I did see one bluebird today, and we even had a few at the last Christmas bird count.

I started some repairs and minor moves on the South side 14 boxes. The first box as you cross the (old) bridge was moved to a new pole. I left the old rusty pole there as I was out there by bike (bikes are not allowed on the foot path, leave them at the gravel) . It is of no use and will be removed.

This box had bluebirds nesting earlier, so I did not want to move it too far so they or their offspring can find it. The other box to its left was taken out as it lacks proper clamps. So now there are two empty poles in that first part. Moving along, box 5 looked terrible and had ants last June so I scrapped it and put a new box.

The pole is rusted but seemed solid enough. Some poles are rusted and have no rebar metal rod, they all will fall over easily and need to be replaced within a year or two.

At the middle, going to Coyote point, one box was part time under water last June so I moved it up to the ridge. The first picture has a square to show where it was. The second shows the two on the ridge now.

At the far end I moved one box, which last had swallows, so that it is now on the right. The left box was not moved, mainly because it had bluebirds at that location.

These were both badly behind sumac plants and far into the grass, They could be reached from the back trail, but that tends to get overgrown, so they can now be accessed from the gravel road, though a good 40 feet into the grass. Here the box needs to be a bit far out, as the tall trees can't be too close. The job of moving was the worst of the day, a good 10 minutes of pulling and turning effort as I have no power tools to do any of this, The rebar was pounded back by hammer and the pole goes over it:

Finally, I hauled the old box out by bike. I can carry just one box.

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.