2010 New Quarter Park Bluebird Year in Review

July was very hard on our
bluebird babies

While we’ve enjoyed learning more about bluebirds this year, the team of New Quarter Park bluebird box adopters discovered that the weather was not conducive to nesting success. Late first clutches and second clutches had fewer hatchlings and fewer birds fledged. There have been no third clutches.

Lois Ullman and Shirley Devan were happy to watch their first clutches of birds hatch and grow in boxes 3 and 6. All were banded by Allyson Jackson, our W&M graduate student advisor, on July 5. Three of four eggs hatched in Shirley’s box; one egg didn’t hatch. Dean Shostak also had one nest of hatchlings. I had a first clutch in my Box 9, but the eggs did not hatch. Approximately 10 birds fledged.

Nancy Norton, Jeanette Navia, Ted Stevenson, and I all had second clutches in our boxes 2, 8, 11, 12, and 13. Twenty-two birds fledged from these second clutches.

Because of the smaller number of hatchlings and fledglings since late June, I e-mailed Allyson Jackson to ask how the heat was affecting the bluebirds’ nesting behavior. She e-mailed back while settling in to her new job at the BioDiversity Research Institute in Maine.

“I totally think that they could be affected by the hot weather,” she said. “They take cues from the environment about food availability before starting their last clutch, so with it being so dry and hot, I imagine there was a lot less food around at the end of the season, which may cue them to not try for a third clutch this year. And if there really is less food, it makes sense that there would be more brood reduction (less nestlings surviving) because the parents can't feed them all.”

Several of us enjoyed watching as Allyson clipped numbered bands around the ankles of bluebirds between the ages of 8 and 14 days at New Quarter Park on Monday, July 5. I hope we’ll be able to band more of them next season. Graduate students like Allyson have been using the data collected from banded bluebirds as the basis for research that increases knowledge about birds and their habitats to support management and conservation efforts.

So, for the 2010 bluebird season at New Quarter Park, we can add 32 birds to the 46 I announced in the June Master Naturalists newsletter for a grand total of 78 bluebirds fledged this year! We look forward to next spring when we will add the boxes at York River State Park to our list of boxes up for adoption. If you are interested in helping with the 2011 season, please let me know. We’ll meet in February or March to plan a new strategy.