I have posted little bits and pieces of my season so far in amongst others posts but I thought I would post a recap of things so far......

To start off we had a pair of Dees excavating a dead tree in our woods only to have it get blown down in a windstorm early this Spring. They then nested in a nearby Gilwood box. Six baby Dees hatched and fledged and mom and dad helped themselves to the mealworm feeder. They seem to have gone on a hunting training trip lately though as I haven't seen them but I am sure they will be back. They were so cute to watch come up and beg for food.

Then we had massive amounts of TRES fighting over our nestboxes both here at my house and the park where I monitor five nestboxes. We ended up having six pairs nesting on our property and three pairs at the park. Our weather keeps going from one extreme to the next here either hot and dry or cold and wet. Fledging of most of the TRES happened towards the end of one of the cold and wet periods so it was a struggle for them. We lost one of the younger broods to it, a nesting of five. However all of the other boxes had a 100% fledge rate, except one that had one unhatched egg in the box yet. So we had 46 TRES fledge between our house and the park.

Then once the TRES had settled down and picked their boxes we finally had a Bluebird show up. It was a lone female however, no male in sight. Exciting thing about this was that it was my same female from last year as her color is a bit different from normal, more of a sky Blue and she knew what the mealworm feeder was, I didn't have to train her. I have a jailhouse style feeder. Here is a photo of her...

She started building a nest even though there was no male. Finally a male showed up but he had a different female with him whom he seemed to have dumped for our female. I checked the box the day after the male showed up and there were two eggs in it already so she laid an egg before the male showed up. She then went on to lay six eggs, all hatched and all fledged. Two days later mom was starting a new nest but then that evening we had a bad windstorm go through, not sure what the winds were but anywhere from 50-70mph. Momma Blue was injured and I have no clue if all the fledglings made it or not. I know there are some because they are taking worms away to them but I have only seen one so far, just this morning. This is Momma Blue with her injured leg...

I am hoping her leg can and will heal and she can go on for her next nesting. I am not sure though what will happen. Daddy Blue is still defending the box she had started her second nest in but she hasn't gone near it since. I am not sure if she could get in and out of a nestbox with one leg or not.

Here is a little video I took of one of the six baby Blues fledging the nest. Ok, I couldn't figure out how to get the video on here like I normally do to share them. Hopefully the link shows up below and you can click on it and it will take you to my photobucket album to view if you want.

Then a week ago on Monday I discovered a new Blues nest in one of our boxes at the back of our lot. The box had been empty on Saturday. She laid her first egg on Friday and now has four eggs.

So that is it in a nutshell for now....hopefully only good news for the rest of the nesting season.

Donna

Here is a link that might be useful: