If you would like to join me for my Feathers on Friday meme, please put the link to your blog post in the comments and I’ll add the link to my post.
The Tree Swallows have taken over our yard again this year with a pair of Swallows at each nesting box,
Nikon D610, handheld, f5.6, 1/500, ISO 100, Nikkor 200-500mm, natural light
More Feathers on Friday Posts:
This past Saturday was our Naturalist Society’s annual spring bird count (my post about the count should be published in the next week or so). On the count, I came across a pair of Mountain Bluebirds on the bluebird trail. The other 40 or so boxes on trail are taken over by Tree Swallows who don’t seem to get along too well with the bluebirds.
The Mountain Bluebirds were very co-operative, posing for me nicely and apparently not bothered by me being near them (I was about 30 feet away from the nest box).
Here are a few of my favorite photos of the Mountain Bluebirds from that day,
The House Sparrow may be a nuisance in North America, it is a declining species in its native range of Europe and India. The Nature Forever Society is hoping to raise awareness of the sparrow’s declining population creating World House Sparrow Day.
World House Sparrow Day has been celebrated on March 20th every year since its establishment in 2010. Even though we’re past March 20th, there are still a few ways you can help the House Sparrow (if you’re outside of North America) by putting up nest boxes and bird feeders.
Happy belated World House Sparrow Day everyone!
A thriving Canadian House Sparrow,
About five years ago my dad put up a a 32-foot tall hawk platform on our farm, hoping to encourage the Red-tailed Hawks in the area to nest there, but the hawks still haven’t shown any interest. For the past two years we’ve put sticks on the platform to help entice the hawks, maybe this will be the year?
This past Sunday, we added some more nesting material to the platform, using our Skytrak telehandler. Here I am by the platform,
Hawks do a much better job of arranging the sticks than I do, but it’s just to get them interested and (hopefully!) they can finish the job,
This year I’m the hiking project leader in our 4H Outdoor Club, and on Saturday all of the club members came out to our farm to build bird houses for our community service project. We’re donating the boxes to the local Habitat for Humanity to use as part of their spring fundraiser.
We built the boxes in our shop as it was -12 Celsius outside. We made 45 houses, enough for Habitat for Humanity and also for nine members to take bird houses home to put up. I spoke on the care, placement, and maintenance of birdhouses and what birds might be expected to occupy them (Tree Swallows, Mountain Bluebirds, House Wrens).
With a little bit of luck, there will be some new houses, big and small, around here.
Yesterday afternoon I checked our 10 Tree Swallow boxes. The most eggs I found in one box were eight, and the most chicks I found were eight!
Five chicks and two eggs,
Dive-bomb by a protective parent,
Eight chicks,
Prairie Birder 