Walking The Nest Box Trail

We walked our nest box trail today, as part of our wildlife management activities. We have eight boxes up now, with plans for more. We put them up in October last year and have been checking them semi-regularly since.

We're now in the nesting season and this is our first formal check. We keep a log of what we find and take photos as part of the record. In a random check a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that some of the boxes had nests in them, so we wanted to check every one.

Five of the boxes contained nests. I wonder why the birds decided not to use three of them, or at least not yet. Two of the unused ones are along our driveway, so I thought maybe there is too much human activity nearby for them to be attractive. One, though, is not near our daily activities.

This is nest box #1 which is near our house. The nest is made of ashe juniper needles, a few twigs and leaves, and some fur. The fur might be from our dogs.

Nest box #6 is near our neighbor's horse pasture and it has quite a bit of horse hair in it. It also has bits of cellophane and grass stems. The nest is lopsided and tilted. It looks like the opening is off to the side, in the lower right of this photo.

Nest box #7 is also near our neighbor's horse pasture, but it looks different than #6. The nest is round and level with the opening on top.

Nest box #8 which is near one of our wildlife water dishes had three eggs in it! The eggs are very small and a uniform light blue. I estimate they're about 1/2 inch long. The nest is made almost entirely of grass and is very neat, round, and well-made. We think they're bluebird eggs but I'm going to ask an expert for confirmation.