Saving Cavity Nesters

 Less than 10 days and this guy is getting big! We changed out his original lead to a bigger one I found and he is chowing down! We cleaned out the frass (poo) today. 

Today was hatch day for the monarch egg! The egg took approximately 5 days to hatch. It looked like a little blob and proceeded to eat it’s egg shell. I did have trouble locating it as it moved to a different leaf! My boy and I have taken it and the leaf and placed it in a plastic container to help make sure this guy makes it. This generation caterpillar is gen 4 of 4 for the year and will have to make the migration to Mexico and back to the United States in the spring. With a long journey ahead we want to prepare him/her and ensure it’s survival to start generation one of 2021! Check out his picture taken with my iPhone.

 First Picture of the new gourd rack!    First picture with the decoys installed. Picture taken from behind the fence. It is not close at all to the utility boxes. (optical illusion)       2020 Martin Season of Drama     I'm no stranger to cavity nesters. If you read my intro, you already know I have 20 years experience with Bluebirds and Tree Swallows. Completing this personal milestone I decided to start researching what other birds might be in need of help. Around May 23rd, I had a Purple Martin fly over my neighborhood and I did not have any housing. I decided to go ahead and order a rack of 6 horizontal gourds with starling resistant entrances. I got the rack up on June 4th hopeful to attract some birds. I started playing the dawn song. I had one or two more flyovers that I know of. Little did I know I would have to take down my housing on June 16th after I was reported to the City. I posted the following on a Purple Martin Facebook Group a...

I collected several common milkweed pods last fall to try and grow from seeds this year. I was able to get some to germinate and grow but they died when I moved them outside. Today my son and I decided to take all the remaining seed pods and release them into the field behind our house. It looked like it was snowing! I’m hoping some seeds will germinate and this will be the start of a new milkweed patch for seasons to come. It certainly would be nice having more plants nearby. These plants provide the lifecycle of the Monarch Butterfly. Check out this picture, all the white you see are seeds!

This season I had two Gilbertson nest boxes placed in each side yard of my .30 acre lot. Bluebirds picked one, and sparrows seemed to always be hanging in or around both. I have inbox traps and also ordered and successfully trapped dozens of house sparrows with a repeating trap. I feel like this will always be a battle every year. While I don’t see anyone else providing nesting cavities, people do feed cheap bird seed in the neighborhood.  The Bluebirds raised two successful broods of 4 and 5 young respectively. Of course this didn’t go without issues. The first brood fledged May 31st. April and May were unseasonably cool. The female bluebird laid 4 eggs her first clutch but did not incubate for some time. Eventually she began building a new nest over top. She spent most of April sitting on eggs. In her second attempt she laid 6 eggs and two were pecked by house sparrows. I don’t have spoookers but I do have wren guards made of cardboard boxes with plastic wrap around...

During the month of May 2020 I got the idea to take a couple pieces of scrap wood and screw them together to create an Nesting shelf with 11” x 5.5” of space. I secured them by drilling two holes and running metal wire through them. I removed a piece of Fashia and twisted the wires together and replaced the Fashia. I put one on each side of my house in hopes to attract open cup nesters such as Robins, Cardinals, Barn Swallows, Doves, etc. Again being on .30 acre lot and not much space, this is urban birding at its finest lol Pictured below is nest #1 of Mourning Doves who took up residence on one of the shelves in the month of July, successfully fledgling 2 young. The eggs were touching the floor so I spruced it up with some pine needles.  I never expected this at all since for most birds it’s late in the season, but Brood #2 on my shelf is under way with two more eggs! I’m already excited to see what next season will bring for open cup nesters!

 Growing up in elementary school in a small town, every year a teacher brought in monarch caterpillars and we got to watch their progress over the summer. This year I created an “urban raised flower garden” for pollinators and next to it I transplanted about 6 common milkweed plants. I found this isn’t the ideal location being directly next to my privacy fence because they don’t get many hours of sunlight each day. Only one of the plants survived and has slowly grown to about 2 feet tall.  Today I happened to be outside around the flower garden and sure enough a female Monarch flys into the yard, onto the plant and deposited at least 1 or 2 eggs. Later I went to look for them and sure enough I found one and possibly another one. I know this plant probably isn’t even enough for one caterpillar let alone two, but I do know where some patches of milkweed are growing if I need extra leaves. At this point I haven’t decided yet if I want to let nature take its course or bring those ...

 Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Mann. I am 33 years old and I have been actively supplying housing for cavity nesters such as Eastern Bluebirds & Tree Swallows since 2000, making 2020 my 20th season! I got my start at 13 years of age because I took a shop class and we made a standard wooden bird house. Of course when it was completed I took it home and mounted it to a fence post. My parents lived on 2 acres with pasture. I kid you not within minutes there was a blue colored bird sitting on this box.   Excited I had to find out what species of bird this was. I thought it was a Baltimore Oriel due to some orange I saw on it. I had to hop on the computer and dial up the internet and do some research on the world wide web. I believe it was around this time that I found the Bluebird L mailing list and subscribed to this list. Soon after I actually found out that the birds that found MY house were Eastern Bluebirds.   My parents had a pole barn so in the seasons to come I...