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Project Nest Watch [1]
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Date: 2022-07-07
Equipment you may want:
Binoculars are almost a must. You don't need, or maybe even want, extra strong ones, nor even expensive ones. It's far easier to keep track of rapidly moving birds with an 8X or 10X pair. Stronger ones make the things you are focusing on seem to jump around. A spotting scope is fine once you have located a nest, but I've never used one.
You will want a way of keeping track. You may be happy with a notebook. If you want a visual record, I use two kinds of cameras. I use my big black dSLR for a lot of pictures, but it's just not the right thing for looking into nests from the top. For that, I have an ordinary small P&S. I just crack the top of the nestbox, slip it in and push the button, and leave. I check the picture when I'm away from the nest. A flash is essential; it's dark in those boxes. And you have to be sure your camera can focus that close to the subject.
And that’s about it, for a total investment of less than $15, assuming you already have a camera.
The tree swallows use the same nest boxes that bluebirds use. They nest later, so they may take over a box when the first bluebird clutch fledges. Bluebirds usually lay two clutches a season but tree swallows lay just one. There is a plate added around the opening to keep larger birds (house sparrows, starlings) from chiseling it to make it wider.
First, I have to find the nests. I start in early spring because that's when most birds start, too. I often use my car as a blind (a hide, for our English readers). I watch for bird movements, especially repeated movements not around the feeders. And I watch for birds carrying nesting material. It’s possible to buy or improvise nesting material that will appeal to a variety of birds. I use one of the square suet feeders filled with whatever I think birds will like that year, as long as it’s new and clean.
Nest Boxes:
I have an awful lot of nest boxes that I've accumulated over the years. Most of them are on a stand, with a baffle to keep climbers (raccoons, snakes) out. Almost all have snake guards around the opening. Those also keep hawks and owls from perching on top of the box and reaching inside. Yes, they will do that. I also have mealworm feeders on the backs of some nest boxes to give bluebirds the idea that this home is for them. You don't have to have nest boxes. You can watch for open nests or birds nesting in natural cavities. Nest boxes just give me the best opportunity for pictures inside.
This gives a good view of the workings of the nest box. The top has a little pin that rotates to either hold the top down or allow it to be opened. The side has a pin, too. You lift from the bottom and it pivots where the screw is near the top of the back. Look closely and you will see a little grass on the side. That’s a sign this nest box is in use.
If you don’t want to invest in nest boxes (good ones are expensive) you can just enjoy the pictures of pretty birds on your way down to the parts about open nests.
I position every one of my nest boxes to face southeast. I’ve read that that’s best practice, so the box will warm in the morning but not bake in the summer afternoon.
Then I need to identify the nests l find. All kinds of birds use these boxes. I’ll show you the common ones I get here in northeast Kansas, and how I can tell who is setting up housekeeping in my boxes, in case I didn’t see any birds moving in. (Sorry about the quality of some of the photos. I lost a lot—thousands! --of pictures in various hard drive transfers and had to make do with what I could find.)
House wrens are thinking about this nest box.
If I see a loose pile of sticks, it means my nest box is under consideration by wrens. The male house wren will select three or four nest cavities and put some sticks into each one. Then he will take the hen on the real estate tour and show her what he’s selected. She will pick one of those for her nest. She’ll probably remove what he’s put in and build the nest her way. Of course, this means that my box may not be the one to make the final cut, but at least it did attract attention so someone did find it acceptable.
House wrens are loud! But that’s not the only reason they don’t make good neighbors for the other birds. They are territorial. But nature has its own rhythms.
Worse bird neighbors are the invasive alien species, house (English) sparrows and starlings. I don’t allow either to nest in my boxes. I control starlings by limiting their ability to enlarge the nest box entry. If they try to nest in other spaces, such as under the dome of the propane tank, I remove the nests.
House sparrows are an invasive European species that is aggressive towards other birds and that can outbreed them, too.
If I see a loose pile of grass, and maybe trash, piled up to the top of the box, it’s house sparrows. I don’t allow them to breed. They will out-compete native birds for nest space. There are a couple of ways to handle this. One is to plug the opening of the nest box.
Another way to prevent them nesting is to remove the nest material as soon as they bring it to the box. Either way, native birds won’t be able to use the nest box that year, but neither will the house sparrows.
A pile of moss as a base means that I have black capped chickadees. They’ve also picked up some hair to line the nest. They don’t tolerate someone checking on their nests. If it happens too often, they will abandon the nest box.
From the top, you can see the hair and grass lining of the nest, and some of the moss underlayer.
A neat, firm base probably means bluebirds. You can confirm this by looking from the top. Here, you can see the wire base I use to help control mites. That’s what they told me at the store when they sold me these for every box, anyway. They do help with cleaning at the end of the year, so there’s that.
It’s possible that the base of grass means tree swallows. Check from the top. They line the nests with feathers that they scrounge. My neighbors have lots of fowl, so I can see some very colorful feathers in these nests. Tree swallows make just one nest a year.
Identifying eggs. If I’ve already scouted the nests, I probably know who is nesting in the boxes. But if I find a nest of eggs, I can tell from those who is calling my box home.
There may be some variation in tree swallow eggs, but they are nearly white and occasionally have the very faintest of speckles. The hen has carefully enclosed them in the feathers.
I knew that tree swallows feathered their nests, but I didn’t know that wrens did, too. This is the nest of a pair of house wrens.
Bluebird nests swirl round and round and are lined with softer grass. The eggs are definitely “robin’s egg blue.” They build a pile of rough grass, then use their chests to work a hollow in the middle that they line with something softer.
This was one lucky shot!
Bluebirds and tree swallows will tolerate a lot of fidgeting around their nests. I don’t abuse that, but sometimes I come more often than to other nests. Bluebirds usually make two nests a year, and rarely will make a third. I usually count five or six eggs per nest.
Chickadees have a low tolerance for having their nesting interrupted. I’m in and out quickly, and not often.
I try to avoid opening chickadee nests, or even passing too close, as much as possible. They definitely are checked less than Cornell would like because the hen will abandon the nest if she’s upset too often. This surprises me because they’re such trusting little birds at the feeders and can easily be tamed to come to your hand. Not that you should; I don’t think it’s legal and anyway it is interfering with their natural habits. She’s built the nest in a corner of the box. Chickadees make just one nest a year.
Nesting in boxes makes it easy to look into the nest and watch the baby birds develop.
I don’t seem to have captured it in any of these photos, but there is a screening grid under the opening of the bird houses. That lets the little ones climb up. I think it was intended as an aid in fledging since the wood is smoother than natural cavities, but the babies take advantage of it to meet incoming parents bringing food.
Tree swallows share space well with bluebirds. They catch their insects on the wing, while bluebirds pick up insects from the vegetation. I have my nest boxes in pairs, and swallows and bluebirds will often nest right next to each other. You can see the chick with mouth open in anticipation.
Birds often stop on the snake guard before entering the nest. Chickadees are always at the seed and nut and suet feeders, but they do also eat insects and worms. This one is certainly welcome to that tomato horn worm.
Open nests:
Brown thrasher chicks about two days out of the egg.
You can find brown thrasher nests if you are in an area where they hang out by listening for their very noisy scolding. They will really tell me off if I’m close to a nest—and their idea of close is a lot farther away than you might think. If they’re making a fuss, look for a thorny bush. I’d always heard that they liked to nest in thorn bushes. On my farm they have always been in the weedy multiflora rose bushes, those invasive pests that farmers and ranchers hate for good reason.
The nests I have found were like a robin nest, but larger and a little deeper, with more mud and no grass lining. The eggs looked a lot like the speckled wren eggs above. The chicks were bigger than the chicks I see in boxes, which isn’t surprising since the thrashers are a pretty good size, too. The nests have been three to five feet from the ground, so easy to see inside. But these chicks will be quick to try to fledge if I disturb them once they have pin feathers so I keep my distance.
Brown thrasher warning me away from the nest. Both parents are pretty cranky about it.
The hawk repeatedly screamed (swore?) at me but never dropped the nesting material.
This red tailed hawk was pretty indignant that I was out in my pasture as it was picking up nest material. It kept screaming at me and swooping down over my head. They usually ignore me but seemed to take this as a threat to the nest. The hawk nest is in a large tree near the back corner of the field. They used it for several years before moving on, like the Dekorah eagles do.
The hawk nest in its early stages.
The hawk nest once the eggs were laid. They start very early in the year because it takes a long time to raise chicks that are this big.
Hawk at the nest.
The nest is pretty high up, so I’ve never even attempted to see what’s in it. I do see the hawks carrying food in, and I see the juvenile hawks peeking over the edge once they are old enough. The nest is very large, so I didn’t have to count on following the hawk to find where it was taking the nesting grass it had. I couldn’t miss this. These are very visible, so look for them before the trees leaf out if you have hawks in your area.
I lost many, many pictures in transferring from one computer to another, over the years. These are some of the ones I recovered as screen captures from weekly newsletters I used to send my grandson, so the quality is less than ideal and the pictures are small. Sorry about that.
This is a Baltimore oriole nest. It’s a pear or teardrop shape, woven tightly with an opening in the front. I found one on the ground once, and I could just fit my fist inside the opening. Since it’s hanging way out on a twig, it’s pretty safe from a lot of predators. I do get orchard orioles but I’ve never found one of their nests.
House finch nest. It’s on its side, just the way it came down during the winter.
House finches nest under the eaves of my house, where the downspout folds back under and makes a sheltered spot with good support. This nest is deeper than a lot of cup nests, and the bottom (on the left side of the picture) went down the sides and under the downspout to anchor it well. It was more than 15 feet from the ground, so I didn’t even think of using a ladder to see inside. It was beside my bedroom window, though, and the wall is covered with Virginia creeper, so I could see the parents come and go. And I could watch the babies as they fledged just a few inches into the vines.
Robin nest in early spring. It wasn’t anchored well enough to withstand 50 mph winds.
Robins can nest high in trees, but they can also nest four feet from the ground, in bushes or vines on the fences. The nest has a twig and mud base, and the grass lining can be lifted out as a separate piece.
Goldfinch nest.
I found this one late in the fall, long past its time of use, so I didn’t get to see how they built it or how it was used. It was in a scrub tree about 4 ½ feet from the ground. Goldfinches nest late in the year. The theory is that they nest when thistle and sunflower seed is plentiful, but I’ve heard that that has become problematic. Climate change is spreading the time between the seeds (earlier than in the past) and nesting, which is instinct driven.
Bluejay nests are built on a base of twigs. You can read my previous diary about this bluejay nest and its chicks.
Mourning dove nests are said to be pretty flimsy, just loosely constructed of sticks and twigs. This one worked pretty well. There were two chicks and they fledged just fine. If you saw my blue jay story a few weeks ago, and the picture above, this nest was in the same spot, a year earlier than the jays, so it must have been a good place for a nest. It’s at least 15 feet above ground level, but my deck is more than seven feet up, so I could watch the nest well even though I couldn’t see down into it.
The barn swallows in my neighbor’s barn pick up some mud (visible in the beak) and then pick a blade of grass or hay. Some birds are fledging the first clutch while the swallows, both barn swallows and tree swallows, are just now thinking about nesting. They don’t seem to think anything of the miniature horses she has in the barn but they definitely give me a good looking-over when I’m there.
My neighbor has a lot of pvc pipe in the rafters. Some of the swallows are nesting on top of piles of pipe, so all I can see are the bits of hay hanging down. Those will be round nests. But this nest is well mudded onto the side of a rafter so it’s a half circle nest. The grass or hay hanging down isn’t so much a part of the original design as a way of handling pieces of extra long grass. They built this much in a little over a day. They were still working on finishing it. It will eventually have a soft grass inner cup and be lined with feathers.
End of the year at the swallow nest.
I know when eggs have hatched in the boxes because the parents carry out the empty shells. They also will carry what looks like tiny, tiny white balloons. Those are fecal sacs. Baby bird poo comes encapsulated for easy disposal. Either the adults get tired of this or the leavings change, because when they leave the nest, they leave this mess. The first bluebird clutch fledges with the ripening of mulberries, so they leave big purple splotches behind. It’s good practice to clean this mess up, but that dust is unpleasant and sometimes dangerous to breathe so I wear a mask and use gloves. I pull the nests out on those wire platforms that I was told I needed and dump them right into a plastic bag. Then I use a putty knife to scrape down the inside of the nest box. Often, birds will shelter in these boxes in the winter so it’s necessary to clean them. The next spring, I am always sure to check the boxes for resident spiders and wasp nests.
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