Bluebird Trail Report 4/5/22

We have some exciting news to report today! We have added Hunter's Green Bluebird Trail to our list of trails that are reporting to us weekly. That 5-box trail was started several years ago by my good friends Darla and Randy Rhude. Our former chapter President, Pat Lewis, used to live in Hunter's Green and encouraged the building of the bluebird trail. Someone else took over monitoring after Darla and Randy moved to Idaho, and it eventually became unattended. Patricia O'Brien-Giglia lives right across the street from the park and noticed that there were birds in some of the boxes, but that they were not being monitored. She was delighted to take over the trail. Thank you Patricia! She and I checked the 5 boxes last week and they already have 2 occupied bluebird boxes, with 4 chicks in one and 5 eggs in the other. They are off to a good start!

The other bluebird trails record the following numbers for the week:

• Balm-Boyette Preserve: One Carolina chickadee nest with 5 eggs.

• Lake Park: 15 nests (12 BB, 2 CC, 1 Carolina Wren), 23 eggs (21 BB, 2 CC), 20 BB chicks.

• Lettuce Lake Park: One bluebird nest with 5 eggs.

• Sargeant's Park: One nest of 5 beautiful BB chicks.

• Flatwoods Park: 9 BB nests with 5 eggs in each of them! 35 nests total (28 BB, 6 CC, 1 TM), 70 eggs (64 BB, 6 TM), 13 chicks (1 BB, 9 CC, 3 TM). See attached spreadsheet for detail.

It was a beautiful, overcast day on the Flatwoods Park Bluebird Trail today and the magic number seemed to be 5. We were very happy to see that Box F45 that had missing eggs last week, has a new nest with 5 eggs already! Box F49 seems to be adding one new bat a week in that box.

We saw some amazing wildlife today in addition to all the bluebirds. We saw some wintering blue-winged teals, male and female bobwhite quail, our first ruby-throated hummingbird, a common gallinule, an immature little blue heron, black and turkey Vultures, a red-bellied woodpecker, white-eyed vireos, blue jays, Carolina wrens, Eastern towhees, palm

warblers and northern cardinals. We also saw a swamp rabbit rushing about. Nancy Eydmann saw and photographed a large water moccasin (aka cottonmouth) at Balm-Boyette Preserve.

Our native garden has a flowering Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), and our Coralbean (Erythrina herbacea) is a beautiful red color that's attracting the hummingbirds. Out in the woods, we spotted a lot of Fetterbush (Lyonia lucida) in bloom (below).

Mary