BRAS Bluebird Newsletter May 2017 We are in full swing on the bluebird trails! Lots of nests, lots of eggs and some fledgling bluebirds are being reported this month. Bluebirds have even started second nests in some places. Tree swallows are hatching and house wrens have been up to their sneaky forays in a few places. The ever present and unwelcome house sparrows have killed too many native birds in nest boxes. (I always HATE finding the gruesome swallow or bluebird corpses left behind). Thankfully there are lots of happy moments when nest boxes are opened though and good nest box management does reduce the loss of native birds!! Unfortunately, weather is one thing we can do little about. The consecutive days of cold and rain in early May caused a terrible loss of many bluebird chicks on several bluebird trails this year in our area. When a nest gets wet and little bluebird chicks become chilled they can become hypothermic and will no longer gape (open their mouths to eat). The parent bluebirds also have a very hard time finding insects to feed their young when there is an extended period of heavy rain. We have seen losses of tree swallow chicks in previous years when weather was cold and rainy but since no swallow eggs had hatched by May 1 st they were protected from this recent period of weather related losses. June 1 st is the date that I try to obtain information about the contents of nest boxes on all Black River Audubon Society bluebird trails plus information from those who have bluebird nest boxes at their homes. Please check all of your nest boxes as close to June 1 st as possible and report what is actually in each box around that date. I am interested in knowing what species is using the nest boxes (bluebird, tree swallow, black capped chickadee, etc.) and how many eggs or chicks are actually present. Then please let me know if you have already had any fledglings- how many and what species. For example, your report might look like this: Box 1 has 5 bluebird eggs and has already fledged 4 bluebirds this year, box 2 is empty, box 3 has 6 tree swallow chicks, box 4 has 4 bluebird young chicks. If you found dead bluebird chicks this year please mention that in your note to me as well as how many were lost. I will compile all this information in an early season report and send the information to all of you in the next newsletter. Thank you so much!! I really appreciate it! In the March newsletter, we mentioned that there were two new bluebird trails installed this year- one at Royal Oaks in Grafton and the second on the grounds of Oberlin College. Here are a couple of photos of the 12 box Oberlin College trail being installed on March 27 th with the help of Marty Ackermann, Diana Steele and her daughters Mari and E.J. Bluebirds are nesting in two of those boxes already!
Monitor Adele Straub has her first bluebird nesting at the new trail at Royal Oaks Park in Grafton. Bob Bement checks nestboxes on his two trails, Dalton Park and Olsen Nature Preserve near Wakeman. John Porter faithfully monitors the nestboxes at Caley Park and Barbara Baudot cares for the Eastern Avenue trail plus Hale Road Loop Trail. May and June are very busy times on the trails!! We are so appreciative of the more than 35 people who volunteer to monitor trails throughout Lorain County! They are truly dedicated and knowledgable bluebird conservationists! If you see one on a trail please thank them for their selfless work! Their trail management often makes the difference between the survival or loss of a native bird s nesting attempts. They make your world more beautiful! What would you do if you find a nest filled with ants like the one Adele Straub discovered early in May in one of her nest boxes? Ants are one trouble shooting area of nest monitoring. Many monitors find an occasional box which is ant infested and it is important to know what to do if this occurs. Ants are more
apt to be found in wet nests and can be deadly to young nestlings- they will swarm over them and cause bites and death. If the nest has no eggs nor young yet then simply remove the wet, ant infested nest and replace it with a new dry one which you can easily fashion from dry grasses yourself. Place vaseline clear petroleum jelly on the pole under the nest box and inside the pole at the top to deter ants from returning. (Pictured above). It is helpful to keep a container of dry grasses in your car trunk in case you might need it. I use a clean old plastic coffee can with lid to store dry grasses. If the wet ant infested nest does have eggs or young then first fashion a new nest from your available clean dry grasses then remove the eggs/young carefully from the old nest, placing them in the container. Once you have scraped out the ants and replaced the old nest in the box with the new dry one you can return the young to the nest. Nest changes are also recommended if a nest is heavily infested with blowflies. Here is a helpful website for more information about nest changes. http://www.sialis.org/nestchange.htm During this busy nesting time it is a good idea to review how to trouble shoot other problems before you actually encounter them. Wasps, mice, house sparrows, house wrens, raccoons, and cats can all be problematic. Learn to recognize differences in the nests and eggs of birds you might find in nest boxes. Bluebird nests are made of fine woven grasses or pine needles and can be 3-7 inches high with a central cup. Bluebirds usually lay 4-6 pale blue or rarely white eggs. Tree swallow nests resemble bluebird nests but are usually made with slightly coarser grasses and have a shallower cup which is lined with mostly white feathers. They will lay 4-7 white eggs. House wrens have a nest full of twigs with a small grass cup near the back corner of the nest. They lay 6-8 small whitish eggs with brown spots. Black-capped chickadee nests are made of a moss base with a small depression of animal fur and they lay 6-10 small pale orange eggs with reddish brown spots. The non native and undesirable house sparrow creates a nest which often fills a box, is dome shaped and is made of grasses, weeds with seed heads, plastic, paper, feathers and trash. Their eggs are cream colored with brownish spots. DO NOT ALLOW HOUSE SPARROWS TO EVER SUCCESSFULLY NEST IN A BLUEBIRD BOX. It is better to have NO nestbox than to have one which is not cared for and which produces house sparrows!! Allowing them to breed does far more harm to ALL cavity nesting birds, not just bluebirds. Please be a responsible bluebird landlord! In March the students of Mr. Eric Robson s LCJVS class finished making hundreds of number and name tags for the Black River Audubon Society s bluebird nestboxes and we were happy to be able to actually meet and thank many of those students for their contribution to our bluebird program. Having legible numbers on the nestboxes helps so much with the record keeping done by each bluebird trail monitor. The female bluebird in the above photo on the right models a nestbox which has the name and number tags made by the Lorain County Joint Vocational Technical Students! They both look great!!
Opening the door of a bluebird box is like opening a box of chocolates- sometimes you love what you find and sometimes you don t! Here are some examples of photos taken while walking a bluebird trail: The first photo is unfortunately not an uncommon sight- it is a beautiful tree swallow which had been killed by a non-native house sparrow. The second photo is less common and shows a beheaded snake found on a nestbox roof. ( I expect a hawk carried it to the roof and then was interupted while eating it). Six young bluebirds in a nest, another nest with 6 bluebird eggs, and five hungry bluebird chicks gape for food in unison. A tree swallow takes nest building grasses into her box. A male bluebird captures an insect for his young.
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town - Henry David Thoreau Newsletter and photos by Penny Brandau pennybrandau@gmail.com 440-670-3684