Goldfinches, baby towhees, and a hungry bluebird nestling!
Hi, everybody! I’ve got some really fun pictures for you today, including a reader-submitted bluebird photo! I’ll start with the news that we’ve finally put a finch feeder (filled with thistle seed) back up, and the goldfinches are loving it. The old one had been decimated by hungry squirrels and house finches, and it was beyond any more of my duct tape repairs. You can get a sock like this from Lowe’s or Home Depot pre-filled with seed for five bucks, so it’s an easy way to attract some beautiful birds to your yard. The bright yellow one is the male, and the female is the more yellow-green.
Also, I’d like to introduce a new bird to our blog, the brown thrasher (right). We’ve had these birds in our yard sporadically, but I’ve been unable to get a good enough picture of one to post. Brown thrashers sometimes come to our seed plate, and when they do, look out! It’s vacuum cleaner city, baby! Anyway, I like the brown tones they have and the yellow in their eye. They’re fun birds that dig around in the leaves and are very similar to our…towhees! Woo-hoo! Towhees are a personal favorite of mine, and we had a couple of juveniles (below) scavenging among the thistle seed fallout below the goldfinch sock this weekend. The female towhee has the brown and orange colors, while her brother (presumably) is more gray and brown. Eventually, the male becomes a pretty black, orange, and white combo (see picture from a previous blog).
In addition to the picture of a mockingbird taking an illegal rest on our bluebird nestbox (below), we have this cool photo from Lynn Anne in California of a bluebird nestling! This is their first bluebird nest, and the babies fledged just this past Thursday, August 7. You’ll notice the way the hole has gotten pecked away some, too. Lynn Anne asked some great questions about this and some other bluebird issues; you can read our running conversation in the comments section of my very first blog entry. Incidentally, I’ve been getting a lot of fun bluebird questions lately. You may want to go under the Eastern bluebird category on the right and check out some of the older posts. Lots of great comments and questions are piling up there. If you’ve got a good photo, send it to me, and I’ll include yours as well! Dave dheiser@wncn.com
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Hi and thanks for the questions!
From what I’ve read, bluebirds are fairly “heat tolerant.” The heat can cause problems for egg hatchings, though. Some precautions that we can take as “landlords” to help our bluebirds: birdbaths, siting the nestboxes in shady areas if possible (but still not too close to trees), and using nestboxes that have vents in them to let the heat out.
The fledging can occur on different days, especially if there is a “runt” in the group that may go a few days later. Doesn’t sound like anything to worry about, and I bet they’ve flown out by now. :-)
I’m not sure where they take the fecal sacs when they remove them from the nest…good question! I’ve seen ours fly them up to a large branch across the yard, but I’m not sure if they get put up there or dropped down from there.
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Dave,
I am having a lot of luck with my blue birds. In my front yard I had one nest this year. First time there that I had a blue bird box.
In back yard, just had my third nesting and this morning I saw one fledgling fly out. There are still two more in the box. My question is:
1. How much heat can they take. We had very high temperatures in the last week. 94 F heat index 104. Can they get heat stroke?
2. Last year we saw all five babies fly out one after the other. Now I only saw one fly out and two still remain in the box. Is it possible that they fly out different times or even different days?
3. Do you know what they do with the fecal stuff they carry out?
I know not to open the box after a certain time, but I wanted to make sure the birds were still alive.
Love to hear from you.