[nnasnet] NNAS Monitoring of Bluebird Trail at KCGC/HQ -- April 23, 2012
- From: "Teeps" <tandpteeps@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "NNASHotline" <nnasnet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:13:16 -0400
KCGC is the King Carter Golf Course, located south of Kilmarnock just off
Irvington Road. HQ is Hills Quarter, the community associated with the
golf course. NNAS is the Northern Neck Audubon Society.
You do not have to be insane to monitor bluebird trails, but it helps. We
were crazy to be out this morning; temperature in the 40's, winds NW 7-10
MPH, with gusting. We survived. A Nor'easter came through and brought
some much needed rain and the cold weather. One year in the past, a
Nor'easter soaked and chilled (and killed) several BB young. No mishaps,
this time.
I must make a correction to last weeks report. One box thought to contain
Chickadees is actually a brood of 6 Titmouse young. I take a little
comfort in the fact that even experts can be confused with chickadee eggs
vs.. titmouse eggs identification. Other Brand X news........one box does
have chickadee young; we saw a parent fly from the box when we stopped to
check. The young were in the process of hatching-----4 young and 2 eggs
still to open. They are the TINIEST things. If you have ever seen a
chickadee egg, you must realize that anything contained in there must be
small! Also we have 6 tree swallow eggs in the martin gourds. There were
2 boxes that had paper wasps starter nests attached to the roof of the
boxes. The wasp nests do discourage the BBs, so we removed the nests and,
in addition, discouraged the perps. Still several empty boxes; no
explanation. First of year barn swallow spotted today.
Here are the counts:
Complete nests (No eggs) , last week: 2; this week: 1
Number of eggs last week: 57+; this week: 51+
Number of young last week: 26; this week: 34
Number of fledges, this week: 1, (the one we saw peering out last week)
There were a couple of instances of female on the nest where we could not
get an egg count. Stay tuned..........Tom
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