The Bluebird Trail Is Ready For The 2014 Nesting Season

The Trail is almost completely finished with 25 Nest Boxes and 6 feeder stations up and busy with bluebirds eating dried meal worms and sunflower hearts. We will be adding 3 more feeder stations to the trail, they will be put up as soon as someone wishing to be a friend of the bluebird trail sponsor's one or all of them. If you sponsor a feeder, we put a name plate on the feeder with the name or names of your choosing.

The cost to sponsor a feeder station is $150.00, the materials to build the station is $50.00, leaving a donation of $100.00 to help feed the birds along the trail this coming nesting season.

All 25 Nest Boxes have been sponsored and 6 of the Feeder Stations have been sponsored by Friends of the Bluebird Trail.

We had a great year during 2013, with 20 Nest Boxes up and 1 Feeder Station. Hatching and fledgling 111 new baby birds, 100 that were Bluebirds, 6 Chickadee's and 5 Carolina/House Wrens.

So we hope this New Year 2014 will be even better with the trail having 25 nest boxes and 6 feeder stations up and operational.

If you have not already walked the Bluebird Trail, now is a good time to take a stroll along the easy to walk trail of 2.3 miles or less. The Green Meadows Preserve Parks Department will be cutting some new Trails in the near future, this will give us additional trails and distance that can be hiked in the preserve. This will also allow you to view more of the Nest Boxes and Feeder Station activity.

This picture is of my best friend and big supporter and someone who help's me a lot with the Bluebird Trail Walk and Talk Tours.We will be putting the spring schedule for our tours on the next blog in January. The spring tours will be awesome, as their will be much activity in Bluebirds house hunting and nest building along the trail.

 This lake is one of our favorite hikes when we go to Colorado in the summer to get away from the Georgia heat. This best friend is my wife KC, who is a big fan of the Bluebird Trail.

We would like to say thank you to all those who have been supporter's of the Bluebird Trail this past year in your donation's, as well as those who have come out to join us during our Talk and Walk Tours. I would like to thank all my community garden friends and especially Mike and Sue Plumb for all their help in feeding the birds when I am out of town or after my foot surgery, when it was difficult for me to walk the trail.We would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and the very best during this beautiful Holiday Season.

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

 

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

What A Great Year We Have Had On The Bluebird Trail!

This has been our first full year of birding for the Bluebird Trail at Green Meadows Preserve and what a year it has been!

2013 Quick Summary

 

Total Nest Sites =(25), Total Nesting Attempts =(56), Total Eggs =(123),
Total Young=(111), Total Fledglings=(111) 

We are at the end of the nesting and egg hatching season, now we see the adult bluebirds at the feeder's and bird bath with their young offspring. We

have had some success with our Bluebird Trail Talk and Tour. Our next scheduled tour is this Saturday morning September 7th at 8:30 am for the Teacher's and Kid's from Still Elementary School, located very close to Green Meadows Preserve. Anyone else wishing to join us along the Bluebird Trail for our Talk and Tour is welcome.

Life After Fledgling, Young birds often remain with their parents, or in the general vicinity of their territory, throughout the summer and into fall. Occasionally, families of bluebirds will return to their nest cavity in the fall for a day or so, often entering the nest briefly, or even bringing in a few strands of nesting material. Why they do this is not known.

Feeding Behavior, Once bluebirds are finished breeding, they are no longer tied to their breeding site and wander freely in search of areas with plentiful food. Grasshoppers, crickets, and spiders, all of which are abundant in fall, remain the birds' food of choice until they are no longer available because of cold and snow.

Sanctuary for Bluebirds: Marietta Daily Journal, Lifestyle section, Wednesday August 28, 2013 MDJ Features Editor Sally Litchfield gave the Green Meadows Preserve Bluebird Trail an excellent write up, which has generated a lot of interest and much activity. 

# 25 Final Nest Box, we put up the final Nest Box for
 the Bluebird Trail during the Month of August. This box is sponsored by Chris and Jim Dugan. This completes the number of Nest Box's along the Bluebird Trail. Now we have a few more special Bluebird Feeders to be sponsored and put up in key locations, for the feeding of the Bluebirds this winter.                                                                        
                                                                                                    
Predators, coming in our next blog, how we have been dealing with some real PEST!

Green Meadows Preserve Bluebird Trail, Where Birds Come to Life!

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hot Days of Georgia Summer

This is a very busy season for the Bluebird Trail. With all the rain we have had in the past few weeks, the very HOT and humid summer makes for a lot of work for Bluebird parents to raise a family. With the heat outside at around 90 degrees, the temp in the Nest Boxes is well over 100 degrees.

The Nest Boxes are well vented for summer temp like we are having now. The material is a natural un-treated cedar, which also helps with keeping the temp stable. With that being said it is still HOT in the boxes.

We have had a very successful spring and summer so far, with very few mishaps and very few eggs that have not hatched. It is amazing to see how hard the Mom and Dad work to make the nest, the mom to lay her eggs, then sit on them 12 to14 days during this HOT summer weather. Then to feed each of the babies three times every hour for another 17 to 21 days while they are growing and getting strong enough to fledge the nest. Now you can see why we have bluebird feeders placed along the trail, so that food is near by for the parents to be able to feed the young.
                                                                                 

We have a number of Nest Boxes that now have eggs for the third brood in the same Nest Box since we put up the boxes in Feb/March for the season. I think this is amazing, by simply providing a suitable nesting box location, we have increased the population of the Eastern Bluebird. Nest Boxes mimic the natural cavities and in some ways can be improvements upon them. They are usually better situated, have entrance holes that exclude certain other bird competitors, and they are generally drier and better ventilated.

During incubation the female sits almost constantly over the eggs, exposing them to the full warmth of her brood patch. She incubates the eggs for one continuous period during the night and during the day does shorter stretches, periodically leaving the nest to preen and feed. On hot days she may leave the eggs unattended for longer periods of time.

We are having a very big year 2013 on the Bluebird Trail!

It has been  awhile since we have had a blog posting! Not because we have lost interest in the trail, we have been very busy working the Bluebird Trail. Putting up additional nest boxes and installing bluebird feeders along the trail. We check each nest box weekly to see what is happening with that nest box. We record the nest check data weekly with nestwatch.org The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Nest Watch.

The information below is the results of what has been going on along the Bluebird Trail this year 2013.

 

" Nest Watch 2013 Quick Summary "

 

       (24)                      (48)                      (111)            (91)                (91)

  Total Nest Sites                Total Nesting Attempts            Total Eggs           Total Young           Total Fledglings



More information and photo's to follow in the coming week. The Marietta Journal is doing a article and some photo's about the Bluebird Trail, maybe coming out in August. Will provide the date the article will run in the paper when it is available.

















 

Bluebird Nest Cams

Have you ever wondered what really goes on inside a bluebird box? We see the parents flying in and out but what do the birds actually do inside the box after the door is closed again.

A mirror is used to look into the nests in each box to see if there are eggs, how many, if they've hatched, etc. The parent flies away when we do that and all we ever see are eggs or hunkered down babies. With a nest box cam, you can watch everything!

Nest box cams are special little video systems that you can set up and have it live stream everything that happens in the nest box. There are actually thousands of nest cams out there these days recording the activities of a wide variety of birds.

It is fascinating to watch the development of the babies from incubation to fledging (leaving the box). Some nest box cams even have infrared cameras and you can watch what goes on all night long.  It is amazing to watch the babies wake up and move off and on all night long. They do serious exercises in the boxes during the middle of the night as well. It can be quite addicting to watch nest box cams.

Since this is the Bluebird Trail Blog, I'll only give you a list of 4 bluebird nest cams.  Because the nest cams are scattered around the US, the nests/eggs/babies are in various stages of development. Be sure and keep checking back through the season because bluebirds (especially here in the south) tend to have 3 to 4 broods each year. The further north you go, the fewer broods (sometimes just 2) because the warm season is shorter.

Bluebird Nest Cam - Maryland

Bluebird Nest Cam - Washington (state)

Bluebird Nest Cam

Bluebird Nest Cam - Pennsylvania

Blue Bird Box Two

The blue birds have been busy. We captured this photo in Box Two

Bluebirds are busy!

The weather has everyone busy...even the bluebirds! Jim, Cathy and I checked out all the bluebird houses on Tuesday and we found our first nest with blue eggs! There were eggs laid in Vicki's box but they are not bluebirds....white with brown specks -which led Jim to believe it could be a Carolina Chickadee or perhaps a Tufted Titmouse. Today as I walked the trail I saw two bluebirds on the perch and house of #14. When you have some free time and walk around the bluebird trail it is a great way to relieve stress and see some beautiful and busy birds!