[Douglbirds] Bluebirds

[ouzels8]

The bluebirds will NOT bail out if you open the side panel. In fact one reason for having a swinging gate is to check the progress of the nest. 

Denver Audubon and the Colorado Div. of Wildlife sponsor a major undertaking to monitor bluebird boxes (bluebird "trails"), which ideally involves checking the boxes once a week during the nesting seaspon to monitor the progress of the various nests. Their main caveat about opening boxes concerns nestlings close to fledging; sometimes opening the box will cause them to fledge prematurely. When she knows that the bluebirds have nestlings close to that age, Urling places her hand in front of the nest as she opens it, in order to prevent the little guys from escaping.

You can get information about the bluebird program by going to the Denver Audubon website: www.denveraudubon.org.

Hugh Kingery
Franktown, CO 


PS: We moved to Franktown because of bluebird monitoring. Urling, for several years, worked with a team of four to monitor the bluebird houses south of Castlewood Canyon State Park, on the Winkler Ranch. One morning, just north of CCSP on Castlewood Canyon Road, she saw a house-for-sale sign. Now we live here!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://denveraudubon.org/pipermail/douglbirds_denveraudubon.org/attachments/20080603/6cf3db8d/attachment.html