Top Photo: Eastern bluebird eggs.
We now have four newly fledged chickadees getting lessons in survival in the woods and airspace of the museum. There are seven eastern bluebird eggs being incubated.
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The Cow Pasture nest is all bluebird. The nest looks clean and although the two eggs in the nest are a bit mismatched they’re being incubated by a female eastern bluebird. She hopped off the nest as we arrived.
The more round of the two eggs in the nest appeared to be cracked during last week’s inspection of the nest. I’m curious whether it will hatch.
The four chickadees that had been in the Explore the Wild nest last week have fledged. A new 1/2 pint berry basket was placed in the box for a potential second brood.
The Into the Mist nest box was empty and like the Explore the Wild nest box, is waiting for a potential second brood.
The nest box on the east side of the parking deck is empty and waiting for occupants.
There are five bluebird eggs in the nest on the west side of the parking deck.
The Butterfly House nest box has what is the beginning of a bluebird nest. More work is needed but it’s nearly complete.
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Seven bluebird eggs are being incubated (2-Cow Pasture and 5-Parking Deck West) and four birds have fledge since last week’s inspection (4-chickadees). We have three empty nests with new berry baskets waiting for occupancy.
See you next week!
Quite the throwback, but did you ever happen to get a definitive answer on why the unusually-balding NOCA you spotted back in 2011 (https://www.natureblog.org/bald-headed-cardinal/) had lost its head feathers? (And either way, do you happen to recall what eventually became of that bird over time?)
There’s a several-year-resident female NOCA in/around our backyard here in Columbus, Ohio who’s been showing the same pattern/timing of worsening feather loss for over a month now. Having just noticed that some additional feather loss seems to now be occurring on the equivalent of her hind quarter/”hip” region, I tried Google anew and stumbled onto that post.
I didn’t see any conclusive follow-up posts using a few combinations of search terms, but apologies if I somehow missed it! Thank you so much in advance for whatever insight you can offer (even if none)!