By Kathleen Snyder
Things are coming together just in time; March and the arrival of Western Bluebirds are just around the corner. Beautiful new nest boxes constructed by Rinehold Groepler, Kayleigh Kueffner, and Fred Bergdolt have been installed in Violet Prairie under the leadership of Mary McCallum. The Center of Natural Land Management (CNLM) is deeply involved in prairie restoration in the South Sound region. One of their properties is next to their native seed nursery and undergoing restorative plantings. This was our prime focus for most of the new boxes that were installed.
If the volunteers look cold in the photo above, that’s because they were cold. On the infamous date of 2/22/22, it was snowing as they started their work (you can see snow in the background) and, although the snow didn’t amount to much, the temperature never got out of the 30s. It was even Rinehold’s birthday and he soldiered on as long as he could stand it. Thank you also goes to Quentin Phillips who came out to record the events with his camera.
We had one other location for a smaller number of nest boxes, about five miles from the nursery. This land is being leased by CNLM and bluebirds have been seen there. Fingers crossed that the bluebirds find some of the boxes in these places just the ticket for their nesting needs.
The next step is training the volunteer monitors. Then we will start looking for the birds around the middle of March. We’ll keep you posted.
Photo by Quentin Phillips. Mary McCallum, Bob Wadsworth, and Rinehold Groepler attach a new nest box next to a restored prairie area.
