The Bluebird Project team met out at the Violet Prairie CNLM nursery site in September to finish off the season. Ken Brown, Fred Bergdolt, Mary McCallum, Kathy Prosser, and Kathleen Snyder cleaned out the nest boxes, made repairs, and painted the exterior with heat reflective paint. We hope that the paint will reduce the interior temperature of the nest boxes so that swallow nestlings will have a better chance of surviving heat spells. Bluebird nestlings weren’t adversely affected by heat this summer but the swallows were.
In addition to working on the nest boxes, the group installed two twelve foot fence posts in the fields as raptor perches. In the photo above, Kathy and Kathleen (and Finn, the dog) celebrate the installation of the first post. It really, really helped that Andy Hopwood, CNLM staff, used a tractor and auger to make the 3 foot deep hole. The nursery hopes that by encouraging raptors to the fields, the rodent problems they have will be alleviated. There is an actively used kestrel box nearby which the team cleaned out as well.
Now we wait until spring 2023 and hope for even more bluebird nesting events. We had two this year and hope to build on that going forward.
