The End of Nesting Season Has Come and We Are Into Fall Already!

The Tree of Life as it looked on the first day of Autumn 
Wednesday September 23, 2015. She continues to be a beautiful and amazing tree no matter which season it is. She is a beautiful focal point along the Bluebird Trail.

I would like to say a heart felt Thank you! To all the people who come out for the Walk and Talk Tours that we conduct throughout the year, we have had amazing success with the number of people who continue to show up for the tours.

A big Thank you! To all the friends of the Bluebird Trail, those who help me with the many choirs that are needed to be completed to insure the birds have a successful nesting season.

And to all the wonderful people who continue to make donations to the Bluebird Trail, some I know personally and some I have yet to meet. Your support and contributions help in offsetting the cost of feeding and caring for the birds throughout the year. Without your help it would be very difficult to carry on this beautiful project. Thank you!

The four stages of the Eastern Bluebird Nesting Season: They can have one to four broods during a successful Nesting Season. The Nesting season is mid February to mid to late August.

The building of the perfect nest using pine straw.

 The laying of the eggs, the female lays anywhere from 3 to 6 eggs, 3 to 4  for each brood is more the norm. 

 

 The busy time of the parents feeding the new hatched baby birds twice an hour each for 19 to 21 days. The dedication of the parents is unbelievable to watch.

The continued feeding of the young fledglings for 30 days after they have left the nest. That is the amount of time it takes for the new fledglings to learn to feed themselves. It is fun to watch the young birds setting on the feed stations, waiting for the parents to feed them the dried mealworms.

 

As Recorded With NestWatch For The 2015 Nesting Season, A Summary





The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

  32 - Total Nest Sites

  57 - Total Nesting Attempts

216 - Total Eggs

186 - Total Young

186 - Total Fledglings

210 - The Total with the results of Six additional Nest Boxes to be added to the NestWatch family for 2016.

We welcome your attendance at one or all of our educational series,

 

"Bluebird Trail Walk and Talk Tours"

 Fall - 2015 Dates and Times:

 

Oct. 17th, Nov. 7th and Dec. 19th

 

(All times: Saturday morning's 10:00 AM - 12:00 Noon)

 

Be sure to wear comfortable shoes for walking the 2.3 mile trail.

 

For questions: Call Jim B (cell) 404-202-8755 or jimbearden@bellsouth.net 

 

Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail, Where Birds come to Life!

 

Thanks for joining us along the Trail.....Jim B

Hope Everyone had a wonderful 4th of July week-end.

The 4th started out a bit wet, but turned out to be a good afternoon and evening for the many fireworks displayed around town and the neighborhoods. We welcomed the rain as we have been hauling water to the sponsored Trees/Shrubs planted on the Bluebird Trail.

When we don't get rain for a whole week, my dog Daisy and I have to haul water out onto the Trail in five gallon buckets.

This is why we have only planted 6 of the sponsored Tree/Shrubs thus far, because we have to haul water to them if we don't get rain.

We will plant the remainder of the sponsored Tree's/Shrub's this fall when it is cooler and the Tree's/Shrub's can get established during the fall/winter when we normally get more rain on a regular basis. We still have some sponsorship's available for anyone wishing to sponsor a tree/shrub.

To whomever dropped off the two pairs of Binoculars at the shed, we really appreciate your doing so. We need more Binoculars if anyone has pairs they don't use or want any longer. We have placed a container under the shed by the back gate for you to put the Binoculars on. Thank you!

UGA Cobb County Extension  Family Fun Day! ( Saturday, August 1st )

Join us in celebrating the finale of UGA Cobb County Extension's Horticulture/Agriculture Awareness Week!



Start off the day with our 8:00 a.m. tour of the Bluebird Habitat Trail followed by fun family activities and outdoor classes starting at 10:00 a.m. with activities ending at 2:00 p.m.

Visit the Community Garden, Orchard, Period Garden and Cherokee Garden. You can also visit the bee hives!

Bring the whole family and your picnic lunch! We will have a corn roast and watermelon stand.

Nest Watch - 2015 Quick Summary   
                   

 

  32 - Total Nest Sites Monitored

 

  56 - Total Nesting Attempts

 

201 - Total Eggs

 

168 - Total Young

 

147 - Total Fledglings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We welcome your attendance at one or all of our educational series,

"Bluebird Trail Walk & Talk Tours"

 

( Fall - 2015 )

 

Dates and Times

 

Oct. 17th, Nov. 7th and Dec. 19th

(All times: Saturday Morning's 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.)

 

Be sure to bring your own drinking water, insect spray/repellent

and please wear comfortable shoes for walking the 2.3 mile trail.

 

For questions: Email me at jimbearden@bellsouth.net

 

Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail

 

Where Birds Come to Life!

 

Thanks for joining us along the Trail.....Jim B

Happy Fathers Day and Happy First Day of Summer

Welcome to the first day of Summer on the Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail.

This is the summer season photo of the Tree of Life, she is so full, green and beautiful during this season.

Come bring your easy chair and a bottle of water and come set a spell during these mid 90's HOT days.

She will make you feel cooler just by looking at her, must less setting under her beautiful green cool canopy.


Our last Walk and Talk Tour on Saturday June 13th was a big success, we had 25 brave people come out on a HOT Saturday morning to learn more about the Bluebird Trail and Bluebird.

We had a number of people that were back for there second Walk and Talk Tour. It is always good when we see faces that we recognize and they have guest with them.

One of the items we need for the Bluebird Trail and the many kids and school groups that we do field trips for is Binoculars new or used.

The kids love to take Binoculars on their walks, they think they can see so many more birds and they can see them up close. We put numbers on the binoculars and they check them out and in after their walk.

 We have a donation box inside the gate under the shed for you to drop off any binoculars that you might wish to donate to the Bluebird Trail. Anything you do is always appreciated and used on the trail.

The Bluebird Trail is totally funded through Sponsorships, Contributions and friends of the Bluebird Trail. My pocket funds the difference that it takes to feed the birds during nesting season to help with the healthy development of the baby birds and the cold winter to help keep them alive.

During the Nesting season we feed them Dried Mealworms, to help supplement their insect diet.

Now their are a lot of wild black berries in the park that helps with their food source.

If you come and walk the trail you will see a lot of the wild black berries as you walk the trail.

This is why we are planting berry producing shrubs/trees that are sponsored by different individuals to replace the man made perches at each Nest Box. This will help to provide food during the fall and winter to cut down on our mealworm cost. They are all native trees/shrubs and we have planted 6 already and have 15 that have been sponsored. We will plant the remainder of shrubs/trees in the fall, so they can get established during the fall and winter when we get rain.

Right now we are having to haul water in five gallon buckets out to the 6 shrubs/trees that we have planted. With this mid 90 degree weather and not much rain, we are trying to keep them alive until we get some rain on a regular basis.

I am so excited this year we have hatched and fledged to broods of Tree  Swallows. Last year they made a nest in Nest Box #16 but never laid eggs. This year they made a nest in #19 and #24 laid eggs, hatched and fledged 5 baby Tree Swallows from both nest boxes. They are such a beautiful bird with white chest blue/green feathers on their backs. As you see they use grass and lots of feathers to build their nest.

I hope on your next walk on the Trail you will be able to see the adults flying around the open fields.

Look for this logo to be around the trail soon as our official logo giving directions and distances for the Bluebird Trail. This logo was designed and developed by a group of Kennesaw State Students for the Friends of Green Meadows Preserve Park.

We hope to be able to have the signs in areas of question as to which way you should go to follow the Trail. As you can see it is of the Bluebird and our Tree of Life in the Park.

NestWatch - 2015 Quick Summary

 32 - Total Nest Sites being monitored

 47 - Total Nesting Attempts

177 - Total Eggs

143 - Total Young

122 - Total Fledglings

 

Remember

 

We will discontinue our Walk and Talk Tours for the Summer,

 

we will start the Tours again in the Fall, 

 

look for the scheduled dates in our next blog.

 

 

Any questions: email me at

 

jimbearden@bellsouth.net

 

 

Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail

 

Where Birds Come to Life!

 

 

Thanks for joining us along the Trail.....Jim B

Welcome To June! Can you believe that Summer is Just Around The Corner!

WOW! Can you believe that we are already into the 6th Month of this year already, half of 2015 is about to be gone. I guess as I am getting a little older, time seems to be passing a little faster. Father's Day Sunday June 21st is the official first day of Summer.

We will need to take a summer season photo of the Tree of Life, as we do for each new season on the first day of that season at 9:00 am in the morning from the same location each time.

This is a photo shot of the Tree of Life on the first day of Spring March 20th. Look for the summer photo shot and see the big difference.

This is the Southern Red Oak that is located near Nest Box number 3 on the Bluebird Trail.

She is a 170 plus years old and has a most beautiful shape as you will see with the June 21st Summer Photo shot.

Be sure to come back for a visit to see the difference that three months can make in the look of this beautiful tree.

On May 14th we had the Midway Covenant School 3rd grade class back for their second annual Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail field trip. We had 33 3rd graders and 12 adult teachers or parents on the field trip. It was such a fun day for the kids, they had much fun.

A couple of photo's from the day's outing.
We enjoying having the school back for the second year.
                                                                                                 
 It was quite an adventure for all the boys and girls picking all the beautiful wild flowers. We saw a lot of birds this morning and especially Bluebirds.

I hope the kids will tell their parents about the trail and bring them out to walk the trail with them. It is a beautiful park!

On Saturday May 30th we had our scheduled and advertised in the Life Line section of the MDJ for our Walk and Talk Tour. We had 24 people show for the tour and they were very interested in learning more about birds and especially Bluebirds.

NOTE: We have one more scheduled Walk and Talk Tour on Saturday June 13th at 10:00 am and then we will discontinue the tours until the fall. The summer months are just to hot for me, the people taking the tours and especially the Bluebirds. They are just trying to get through the HOT summer months, laying eggs, raising and feeding babies until they are big enough to (fledge) leave the nest. Once they leave the nest the parents still feed them for thirty days until they learn to feed themselves. It is a fun sight to see 4 or 5 babies lined up on a tree limb crying for the parents to bring them food. Look for our Walk and Talk Tours to start up again in October on a monthly basis one or two times a month.                                     

                                 
I had the opportunity to speak to the Sierra Club Group this past week for their monthly meeting that was held at Life University. We had 24 very interested outdoor adventurous members in attendance.

I hope that I might have pecked their interest enough to get them to come out to the Bluebird Trail for a walk on the Trail.

Nest Watch - 2015 Quick Summary as of today!

 32 - Total Nest Sites being monitored

  46 - Total Nesting Attempts

159 - Total Eggs

122 - Total Young

  97 - Total Fledglings

Remember

 

Date and Time:

 

(Saturday June 13th 10:00AM - 12:00 Noon)

 

Be sure to bring your own drinking water, sun screen, hat/cap

insect/repellent and please wear comfortable shoes

for walking the 2.3 mile easy trail.

 

Any Questions: email me at jimbearden@bellsouth.net

 

Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail,

Where Birds Come to Life!

 

Thanks for joining us along the Trail.....Jim B



 

 

 

"WOW" 2015 Nesting Season Is Off To A Record Year!

The 2015 nesting season is off to a record year on the Green Meadows
Preserve Park Bluebird Trail.

Sorry if it seems like I was missing in action, it has been so long since we up dated this blog.




During the off season we were busy feeding and keeping the birds warm with our new roost box design, it seemed to work quite well.They used most of the Nest Boxes as roost during the cold winter months.



I had some down time with knee replacement surgery during January and the rehab that goes with that type of surgery.

Now I am back on the Trail checking the Nest Boxes on a weekly basis with the help of some very special Friends of the Bluebird Trail. If you would like to become a Friend of the Bluebird Trail and do some training on how to help with some of the weekly task on the Trail just send me a email to jimbearden@bellsouth.net and we can add you to our training classes for a date in the very near future.

The Bluebirds are so busy building nest and laying eggs for their first brood of the nesting season. If you are taking a walk on the trail at Green Meadows Preserve Park you are sure to see many Bluebirds in the area.

I think this is going to be a record year for the Bluebird Trail in the number of new babies that are hatched and fledged.

We have added 2 Nest Boxes to the North Marietta Community Garden, 1 at Still Elementary School and 4 for a Girl Scout Troop at Lost Mountain Park. This gives us a total of 32 Nest Boxes that are being monitored on a weekly basis and recorded with
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Nest Watch. They record and track people like us through out North America on how successful we are in our efforts in helping the Eastern Bluebird to reproduce and increase the numbers of this beautiful song bird.

Nest Watch - 2015 Quick Summary as of last week !

  32 - Total Nest Sites being monitored  

  39 - Total Nesting Attempts

124- Total Eggs

  97 - Total Young

  87 - Total Fledglings 

For the 2014 Nesting Season we had a total of 133 Fledglings for the nesting year. The nesting season in Marietta, GA starts as early as mid February and ends as late as the end of August. Last year the last brood fledged out of Nest Box number 18 on August 28th.

We welcome your attendance at one or all of our educational series, 

" Bluebird Trail Walk and Talk Tours"  

 

Dates and Times:

 

May 30th and June 13th

(All Times: Saturday morning's 10:00AM - 12:00 Noon) 

 

Be sure to bring your own drinking water, sun screen, insect/repellent and please

wear comfortable shoes for walking the 2.3 mile easy trail.

 

For questions: email me at jimbearden@bellsouth.net

 

Green Meadows Preserve Park Bluebird Trail,

Where Birds Come to Life!

 

Thanks for joining us along the Trail.....Jim B