By Kathleen Snyder
As you may know, Western Bluebirds are not the only birds using the nest boxes out at Glacial Heritage and Violet Prairie. The species using the greatest number of boxes are the Violet-green Swallows. Above is a photo of a pair of swallows making use of Glacial Heritage box #13. Tree Swallows are a close contender for most box inhabitants, then the bluebirds, and finally we have six boxes being used by House Wrens.
As of June 17th, we had one clutch of bluebirds fledge from our location in Violet Prairie at the Center for Natural Land Management Nursery. Another brood fledged from Glacial Heritage but we still had five in production (my estimate of 8 bluebird nests last month was incorrect; we had 6 nests). None of the swallow nests had fledged by this time. The nesting period is around 3 weeks for all our species so lots will have happened by the time you read this. I’ll keep you posted.
Photo credit: Violet-green Swallows, by Bruce Jacobs.
