We are most certainly coming to the end of the nesting season. There is only one active nest, the Amphimeadow (AM) nest, and it has four fresh bluebird nestlings within. The nestlings haven’t yet opened their eyes so they’ll still be there when I make the rounds next week. All of the other five nest boxes are empty, the Butterfly House nestlings having fledged during the past week. I expect the nest boxes will remain empty. There’s not much left to doRead more
Posts tagged: #nest box
Bluebird Update 7/15/14
At this time in 2012 we had five empty nests and one active nest, the Cow Pasture nest. That nest was raided the very night following the nest box inspection, the eggs cleared out, I think by a raccoon. Last year at this time we had no active nests, the last one having fledged 5 young sometime before the 9th of July. This year we have two active nests, the Amphimeadow (AM) and Butterfly House (BFH) nests. There are fourRead more
Bluebird Update 7/8/14
One nest has fledged all their bluebirds while two nests are still in the early stages, one contains eggs, the other four fresh nestlings. The Cow Pasture bluebirds have flown their coop. Upon inspection, the nest box was empty except for hundreds, no thousands, of very tiny spiders. At first sight I thought the minute creatures were mites, maybe even ticks. I thought that perhaps their parents had fed off the birds in the nest, laid eggs and now theRead more
Bluebird Update 7/1/14
Here we are in July and we still have active nests. At last week’s inspection of the nest boxes, two were occupied by bluebirds. There are now three active nests. The nest at the Cow Pasture continues to offer shelter to four bluebird nestlings (above). It’s a tight fit inside that cedar nest box but the birds seem to be coping. All look dry and healthy and it shouldn’t be very long before they’re exploring the big wide world outsideRead more
Bluebird Update 6/24/14
We currently have one nest with four yet to hatch eggs, and one nest with four nestlings. There are three empty nests. One nest has failed. The Cow Pasture eggs finally hatched. All four nestlings look to be in good shape. When I opened the side door of the nest box at the Bungee Jump I expected to see four bluebird nestlings inside. What I found were two ant covered, dead nestlings and two unhatched eggs. There were no adultRead more
Bluebird Update 6/17/14
We still have two nests with four eggs each and one nest remains a work in progress. The Cow Pasture and Bungee Jump nests both have four eggs apiece. I had predicted that the Cow Pasture eggs would have hatched by this week. I should stop making predictions, the occupants of the nest are still in egg form. The Bungee Jump nest’s eggs were deposited after the Cow Pasture eggs and I wasn’t quite sure if the female was incubatingRead more
Bluebird Update 6/10/14
Things are moving along, albeit slowly. Three nest boxes are still empty, but progress is being made, all through the efforts of bluebirds. The nest at the Cow Pasture, which held four eggs last week, still holds four eggs. The female flushed from the box as I approached the pasture, she looks to be incubating. This nest was started more than two weeks ago, the eggs laid over one week ago. If all goes well, there will be four nestlings nextRead more
Hooded Merganser Nest
Unfortunately, the mergansers in the above photo do not reside in our Wetlands. I saw a report on the local bird listerv that a couple of broods of wood ducks and one merganser brood was seen at Sandy Creek Park on the south side of Durham. The park is located at the end of Sandy Creek Drive on the northwest side of the intersection of Hwy 15-501 and Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd, just shy of 8 driving miles distance from theRead more
Bluebird Update 5/27/14
Although none of our six nest boxes contains nestlings, nor even eggs, there is still exciting news to report. A new nest has been started, and the last remaining nest which held birds is now empty. The Cow pasture nest box now contains a second bluebird nest. Perhaps we’ll see eggs by next week. All the other nest boxes, Bungee, Sail Boat Pond, Amphimeadow, Picnic Dome, and now Butterfly House boxes, are empty. The Butterfly House nest having fledged its four youngRead more