[Bluebird-babble] fledglings & counting nestlings

Wed May 30 20:59:23 EDT 2007

Aha!!!  No need to write me back--this post appears to have gone through.  Hurrah!  (now, hopefully, someone will have some suggestions)

As an update from p/j land, we now have Violet-green Swallows claiming at least one (and, I'd wager, considerably more than one) nestbox.  I've also found several nests that look like those frumpy, disorganized, but lovable Ash-throated Flycatcher nests.  But so far, I haven't found an adult hanging around to confirm my suspicions.  

Tina Mitchell 

________________________________

From: bluebird-babble-bounces at denveraudubon.org on behalf of Christina.Mitchell at uchsc.edu
Sent: Wed 5/30/2007 6:48 PM
To: bluebird-babble at denveraudubon.org
Subject: Re: [Bluebird-babble] fledglings & counting nestlings

Since I just got a message via this list from Melissa, I'm assuming that whatever was the problem with my first post may have corrected itself.  If this is a duplicate (triplicate?) and for some reason I'm not getting the posts (although I checked my preferences and I should be getting them), my apologies yet again.  (and I guess someone should let me know that they're coming through so I stop bugging y'all!) 

Tina Mitchell

________________________________

From: Mitchell, Christina
Sent: Sun 5/27/2007 9:56 PM
To: bluebird-babble at denveraudubon.org
Subject: fledglings & counting nestlings

Hi, all--

I have a couple of questions for the more experienced monitors among us. 

We have a number of boxes with nestlings in them.  I got pretty confident at counting the eggs with my telescoping mirror, even when the parents were making their presence known to me.  But with nestlings, I'm having a harder time getting an accurate count.  Part of it is that it's just harder to see those little heads; part of it is that I'm especially aware of the parents' presence and I try to spend as little time at the open box as possible; part of it is that I'm a volunteer at a wildlife rehab sanctuary and I hate setting off that gaping instinct in the nestlings when I don't have any food to offer them.  The form says to put an X if we can't determine the number of either eggs or hatchlings.  However, I can usually get a "well, there's at least 3 beaks there" count.  But that's not really science, now is it?  What do others advise?

Also, last weekend (5/18), I counted (about) 4 Juniper Titmouse nestlings, very tiny but eyes open, looking quite healthy and gaping very nicely.  (The previous week (5/11), no hatchlings--just eggs.)  This weekend (5/25), the nest was completely empty.  Birds of North America estimates 16-21 days as nestlings; if all of the eggs had hatched immediately after I left 2 weeks ago, and they fledged the second before I got there this weekend, they would have been about 13 or 14 days old--which seems a tad young.  But since the nest appeared completely intact and undisturbed, should I just assume that they got lots of good nutrition and care and are in the extremely early part of the statistical distribution?  I think the form just asks for the # of eggs/nestlings found on a particular date and doesn't ask me to determine anything about fledglings per se--so maybe I just don't need to worry about this.  

Thanks for any advice people have.

Tina Mitchell
pinyon-juniper habitat, 7100', 18 miles east of Salida
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://denveraudubon.org/pipermail/bluebird-babble_denveraudubon.org/attachments/20070530/7e872769/attachment.html 