Bluebird Nest
We are in the midst of a very active period for the avian nesting season this spring. On April 27th, I opened one of my nesting boxes along the Rattlesnake Bluff Trail and discovered five light blue eggs in an intricately woven bluebird nest. Kathy and I have been visiting our daughter in North Carolina for the past week and hope these eggs did not hatch during a recent stretch of cold weather. With cold conditions a lack of insects to feed the young birds, mortality could be very high. It is not all that uncommon with such weather to find dead young in the nests.
Baltimore Oriole
Without a doubt, one of the early signs of spring for avid birders in our area is the sighting of the first male Baltimore oriole. That happened for us on the morning of April 27th. This brightly colored male arrived ten days before we observed a female at our grape jelly feeder.
Red Headed Woodpecker
On Monday May 1st, I received a call from a family on Bayview Drive in Upper Wacouta inviting me to come up and take photos of a pair of Red-Headed Woodpeckers they had been observing in their yard for the past couple weeks.
Interestingly enough, the male and female look exactly the same. On two separate photo efforts of these rare birds, I was able to observe only one bird at a time. This led me to believe that the female was already incubating eggs in some cavity. Subsequently, I have received three additional reports of Red-Headed Woodpeckers in the Wacouta and Red Wing areas. This is certainly very encouraging news.
Great Blue Heron Pair
During the 1970's and 80's, there was a very large active Great Blue Heron rookery in the Round lake area of the Cannon river bottoms. For a variety of reasons, this two hundred nest rookery was abandoned several years ago. A couple weeks ago, local outdoor enthusiast Ken Mueller passed along an interesting observation he made late one afternoon from the bulkheads at the upper harbor in Red Wing.
Ken was observing frequent flights of adult herons arriving and leaving a wooded area just upstream of the harbor. As it turns out, a new rookery of approximately 20 poorly constructed stick nests high in the trees has been constructed. With the recent high water on the river, I was able to quietly paddle my canoe into the rookery to observe and photograph adult herons feeding their young.
Northern Flicker
We have a lower section of a dead apple tree in our backyard and recently discovered a fresh cavity had been built and is currently being used as a nest site for a pair of northern flickers. Last spring a pair of flickers used a vacant wood duck nesting box near our pond to raise a brood of five young. At the conclusion of that experience, I opened the box with the intention of cleaning it. I was immediately taken back by the vile smell of pitching manure out of a chicken coop in my younger days. Some parent birds keep their nests clean by removing the fecal sacs of their young. Flickers obviously don't follow that practice.
Wood Duck Hen
One of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of providing wood duck nesting boxes in our backyard is to determine when the young ducklings hatch and jump to freedom.
Wood Duck Nest Covered in Down
I have learned from experience that during the egg laying ritual, the hen will stay in the box just long enough to lay the egg and bury it in wood chips. One egg is laid each day until her clutch is complete at which time incubation commences. By opening the box and counting the number of eggs during this beginning phase, I can determine when the first egg is laid.
Wood Duck Eggs
During incubation, the hen will leave the box only twice a day for a very short period to get food and water With a little luck, I will catch a glimpse of her leaving the nest and then quickly go down and open the box. After carefully lifting the insulating down off the warm eggs, I make a thorough count. From that count, I can determine when incubation started. Roughly 30 days later, her eggs should hatch I will provide details of that experience at that time.