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| Six week-old tree swallows |
On
the trail this week are four boxes with bluebird nests and four boxes with tree
swallow nests. The six or seven chickadees fledged and I cleared out their box.
I installed a hole reducer on the box claimed by persistent house sparrows to
encourage them to look elsewhere. So, there are three empty boxes on the trail
this week.
There
are 14 bluebird eggs in three boxes. In the fourth box, for the third week in a
row, I’ve found a female bluebird on her nest. This is unusual. If her five
eggs (laid at least 20 days ago) had hatched I doubt she’d still be on the
nest. Her eggs may have failed.
I
believe all the tree swallow eggs have hatched, though it is impossible to
confirm with all the feathers blocking my view. There could be up to 24 tree
swallows in those four boxes. Six of them (confirmed) are about a week old.
