Bluebird Nestwatch 2023

In the spring of 2021, an unknown predator, likely a raccoon, possibly a hawk, ate a nest full of four newly hatched bluebirds from the birdhouse in the back corner of the yard. I was horrified to find the damaged roof and empty nest, just days after the hatch. We repaired the roof, but no birds have nested in that house since, after having done so every year since 2010. And now the squirrels have chewed out the entrance hole to the extent that no songbird could ever feel safe in that house. Who can blame them? It bears the kiss of death.

So in March of this year, I hung a new birdhouse in a different location--from the eave of our house at the end of the deck. I doubted bluebirds would nest so near civilization, but I hoped for wrens or finches, both having reputations for nesting on porches. I found a few sticks in the bottom of the house soon after hanging it, but no further activity. Whoever started with the sticks must have chosen to nest elsewhere. 

The setting

Then one afternoon early in May I was sitting in that wicker chair in the photo, enjoying a cup of tea and a good book, when I heard the distinctive male bluebird murmurings of mating season behind my shoulder. Churrrr-chur-chur. Sure enough, a slow turn revealed Mr. Blue perched on the new birdhouse. Was he hoping to get lucky, or had he already been? As I watched, he flew away and returned immediately with a stick to drop into the house, then another and another. He didn't seem to mind my presence. 

After depositing enough sticks inside the house to declare his intention, he disappeared for a few more minutes, then, lo and behold, returned with the object of his affection, a handsome female, to show her his proposed location. Bluebirds! And I had a front row seat. Too bad my i-phone 12 camera was not up to the challenge, but I'll share what I could get. 

Mr. Blue presents his proposed location

He invites Ms. Blue to look inside

He makes his argument by
fluttering in and out of the house
and all around her.
She watches stoically.

He asks. She demurs. 

They discuss. 

He awaits her decision
 from the banister beneath the house
watching her every move

In the interim weeks I've seen them flying around the deck and feeders, but couldn't tell if they had built a nest in the box, until one day last week when Mr. Blue carried in sticks all day. All week I saw them both at the feeders more often. There is also a speckled newly fledged pair still being fed by Mr. Blue. Sometimes Ms. Blue comes to the feeder and "scolds" them gently, which surprises me, because I didn't think she could speak. Yesterday she chased them off the feeders and scolded me at the opposite end of the deck before she flew into the house and stayed there. This confirmed for me that she's sitting on the eggs of her second brood. I don't know exactly when she laid them, as I've been staying away from the deck, not wanting to disturb, but it was sometime in the past week. Today I took this quick peek in the house after I saw her make an exit. 

 

Bingo. Nestwatch 2023 begins. Expected fledge date: sometime near the end of June.  

It's a miraculous time of year.  ~dkm 6-5-23

Bluebird Nestwatch 2016, Day 40

Bluebirds are in the house, the result of courtship behavior reported in last post. So I begin a formal daily watch of the new green bluebird house on the loblolly pine trunk in the backyard. New last year, that is, but nobody nested in it, presumably due to the squirrel that sat on the roof all the time, twirling and nibbling an acorn in its paws, like it thought Moe Miller installed a well-supported shelf on the tree just for him—or her.

But this year—oh lovely this—the bluebirds, early nesters that they are, beat him to it. Not to be trifled with, Mr. Blue makes a loud clicking sound and dive bombs any squirrel that comes near. Mild mannered bluebirds, come to find out, are as fiercely protective as any species when threatened, but otherwise are more secretive in their nesting habits than the gregarious housewrens of years past.  While Mr. Housewren sings his bubbly heart out from a nearby perch throughout the nesting cycle,  Mr. Blue sings his quiet murmury song only during courtship. Then once he and his mate settle on their home of choice, they get to work building their nest, and he stops singing. Between the bluebirds' quiet ways and my pre-occupation with other activities, I almost forgot about them this year, until I noticed, mid-March, a few silent comings and goings to and from the new house with small pieces of nesting material in their beaks—mostly moss, I think.

By now she is definitely sitting on eggs, which must be nearing hatch date, considering he's been protecting the house for days, quietly hanging around on nearby perches, bringing her sustenance, or scaring off squirrels. She occasionally comes to the doorway for longing looks into the world and flies out for short periods, but mostly I see only him. One of his favorite perches is the basketball backboard.

Notice the fallen cherry blossoms, too.  Gorgeous this year. 

Not exactly sure where in the chronology of the nest they are. I know from past watches, bluebirds require about two weeks from laying date to hatching date---and about two more weeks to fledge date.  What I don't know is how long from courtship to egg day. Since I was lucky enough to witness their polite mating behavior on Feb 23, which I'll call Day 1, I should be able to count backwards from the eventual fledge day to learn the answer to that question. I could find out online, no doubt, but it's ever so much more fun to discover it via my own daily observations.  I'm 39 days late to the party, but I begin the watch today. I'll report back. dkm

So It's Time

Conk-la-ree! Conk-la-ree! Dtdtdteeeeeeee!  Loud and many.  From the neighbor's tall holly just over the fence. Sounded like red-winged black birds to me—couldn't be—not this early. But yes, on closer inspection, the holly was nearly saturated with blackbirds. So they're already beginning their pass-through on their way to parts further north, soon to be here in huge flocks that cover the ground. Our warm winter has fooled them.

I returned home on Jan 31st, after a month away, to daffodils already in bloom. Earliest I've ever seen them is Valentine's Day, often not till early March.  

daffodils in early Feb, 2012

The winter hellebores have only just bloomed!  Daffodils? Impossible. 

winter helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

I shouldn't have been surprised, because the day I left home, on Jan 2nd, the flowering quince blossoms were just beginning to open—so early I feared they would live to regret it. But they flourished, and I nearly missed them. 

flowering quince, just past peak bloom, Feb 8, 2012

 The camellias that usually show in late Feb &  March are falling all over themselves trying to outbloom each other. 

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

big red, Feb 8, 2012

The cherry buds are swollen and purple, at least four weeks early. I'll be perturbed with Jack Frost if he spoils the backyard cherry blossom show this year.

And just now, as I take my hour of long-sitting in the backyard for the first time since I've been home, who's that I see in hot pursuit of whom? None other than Sir & Madame Bluebird! While I can't be sure it's the same pair I watched through the 2011 nesting season, there can be no mistaking what this pair has in mind today.  Such a teasing and fluttering and darting and chasing and fluffing—in and out of the branches behind the copper roofed bird house. My oh my.

General Beauregard Lee, Georgia's legendary ground hog at Yellow River Game Ranch, who has a 94% accuracy rate, predicted an early spring when he made no shadow on Feb 2, but I don't think even he meant this early.

Wonder what all this says about the kind of summer we're in for, and if the early warming is the certain result of our longterm careless environmental behaviors. dkm

Understated Courtship, Bluebird Style

For a full ten minutes by the clock, from 8:50-9:00 a.m., my bluebird pair sat on the same dogwood branch, three feet apart, out-coying each other. I watched through binoculars from the house. They faced me, she, silent and still, he, preening his feathers with his beak. She appeared to give him no heed, but when he turned on the branch to face the opposite direction, so did she, where they sat for many seconds in more still silence, blue and gray backs to me. With riveted attention to each other, every movement from one elicited the same from the other. Sometimes he turned first, sometimes she, at odd intervals every minute or so, making sure they always faced the same direction.

Their game was a model of elegance in flirtation---that of feigned ignorance, yet heightened awareness. Eventually they flew off together, this marking the first mating behavior I've observed between them. I've seen them often since first sighting on March 8, but always individually. They come to the feeder independently of each other.

Throughout the day he traveled from dogwood branch to feeder to long slow perches near their house of choice. I only saw her two more times--once at the feeder and once peering from inside the house and flying out of it toward the woods. She's gone from the house more than in it. My guess is they have mated recently but she has not yet laid her eggs. After she left the house, he settled on it once, looked inside, then flew away in the same direction she had just gone. Checking for eggs? Looking for her? dkm