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News from the Trail
Trail monitoring report
All nest monitoring is conducted in accordance with The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Nestwatch Nest Monitoring Manual. All monitoring data is entered into the Nestwatch database, and an end-of-year summary is also submitted to the New York State Bluebird Society. If you’d like to follow along with our Bluebird Trail Map, please open https://landisarboretum.org/assets/images/Maps/ARB-BB-Trail-combo-3-4-25.jpg
Nest box monitoring began during March and has continued weekly. As usual, a number of bluebirds stayed through the winter at the Arboretum so there were bluebirds here year-round. The first Tree Swallows returnedon April 15. Since then, they’ve been busy competing with each other and with some of the bluebirds to lay claim to nest boxes. As always, Northern House Wrens showed up late to this party with the first ones seen on April 29.
First eggs of the year at WPT2W
It doesn’t feel like spring until the bluebirds start nesting. In case you didn’t notice, spring arrived late this year. The bluebirds certainly noticed. The first bluebird egg of the year was laid on April 28, which is fifteen days later than last year. As of May 8, 15 eggs have been laid. For comparison there were 32 by this date last year and with four less nest boxes. It will be interesting to see if this year’s birds are able to catch up by the end of the summer. The first bluebird nestlings should begin fledging in early June with the first swallows and wrens following a week or two later.
Tree Swallow laying claim to WT5E. Time will tell whether this proved successful or if a claim jumper took over.
Classes/Field Trips
The bird-related classes and field trips remaining for 2025 include: Early Birding - A Birding Workshop for Kids, Bluebird Trail Walk #3, Sunrise Celebration Nature Walk, Bird Feeder Making Workshop, Second Annual Big Sit Bird Watch and the Annual Halloween Owl Prowl. Visit our Upcoming Events webpage at https://landisarboretum.org/events to see details and to sign up.
Bluebird Lottery – Interim Report
84 participants submitted lottery guesses by the April 15 deadline. These guesses spanned all but one of the 22 nest box pair locations. As of May 8, locations AT2, PT3, WFT2, WPT2 were on track to fledge bluebirds by the June 15 lottery end date, but it is still possible for others to squeak in. The prize drawings will be held in late June and winners will be notified by email. If necessary, a follow-up drawing will be held to award any unclaimed grand prizes. Look for our Bluebird Lottery final report in the fall issue of the Arboretum newsletter.
Featured Bird
Northern House Wren (NHWR) – In 2024, ornithologists split the "House Wren" into several species. The house wren we commonly see in this area is now called the Northern House Wren. None of the other house wren species live nearby. These small, plain looking brown birds are known for their energetic behavior and frequent bubbly songs. Stand too close to their nest and you’ll learn that this small bird can make a lot of sound. They prefer forests, thickets, edges, and areas with scattered trees. NHWR eat insects and spiders. They commonly nest in our boxes, favoring ones that are close to trees and brushy areas. Northern House Wrens will sometimes peacefully coexist with another species nesting nearby. However, they can be fierce competitors for nest holes and may dismantle nests and attack the eggs/young/adults of other birds. They may also monopolize a pair of boxes by nesting in one and filling the other with small sticks. These unusable nests are called “dummy nests”. It is permissible to remove a dummy nest to make it available to other birds but first you must carefully verify on multiple visits that there is no nest cup behind all those sticks. For these reasons, NHWR can irritate people who put out nest boxes in the hopes of attracting bluebirds or other cavity nesters. NHWR migrate south for the winter. You can learn much more about Northern House Wrens by visiting https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/House_Wren.
Almost ready to fly from box WPT3E. Last July this photo was taken 3 days before these Northern House Wrens fledged.
A dummy nest in WT6E.
Muse for the Trail
For Every Bird a Nest
By Emily Dickinson
For every bird a nest,
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little wren goes seeking round.
Wherefore where boughs are free,
Households in every tree,
Pilgrim be found?
Perhaps a home too high
Ah, aristocracy!
The little wren desires.
The lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house.
Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?
Random Facts and Helpful Hints
Digiscoping or taking close up pictures of birds the hard way - I am no authority on photography. I use an old smartphone with a below-average camera. It works fine for taking photos inside of nest boxes of baby birds,and the few adults who refuse to leave. The birds are up close and sitting still. However, birds outside of nest boxes never let me get close enough for a good photo. Sure, I can take one from far away and enlarge the image, but the resulting clarity is poor.
This problem can be solved by buying a camera with a telephoto lens and/or very high digital resolution. A much less expensive alternative that I recently tried involved attaching binoculars to a tripod and then clamping a phone to the binoculars. They make special clamps for this purposecalled digiscoping adapters. This past Christmas Santa gifted me one, plus a binocular tripod adapter. I already owned a decent tripod and a very good pair of 8x binoculars so I was in business at a cost to Santa of $72 plus tax. The digiscoping adapter also came with a Bluetooth device to remotely trigger the camera. This would allow me to set up near a nest box and then stand farther away to take photos. Less stress on the birds this way and I should get some super-close ups of birds going to/from the boxes and sitting on the roofs. As fate would have it, my phone is too old to be compatible with the remote-control software. Oh well. I have to set up farther away than I had planned so the binoculars’ 8x magnification isn’t as consequential as I originally thought.
My experience so far is that this photography system is slow to set up;cumbersome to move; only practical for photographing a small, fixedtarget area (e.g. nest box, bird feeder, bird bath); and easy to jiggle when tapping my phone screen to take a picture. (The remote control I can’t use would’ve solved this.) I have yet to take one good picture. Therefore, I have decided to pause this effort until I get a new phone, hopefully later this year.
Quarterly Boggler
Name a bird that often adds spider egg sacs to their nests.
(see answer at bottom of page)
Nestbox Spotlight
New for 2025! In late winter we installed four nest boxes in the field behind the Waterfall Trail parking lot. It appears that birds like them. Tree Swallows have started a nest in WFT1W. The other pair of boxes, far in the background, have been favored by Bluebirds; they have completed a nest and laid eggs in WFT2W (see next photo).
WFT2W is a Gilbertson-style nest box. Squeezing the body of this box unclips it from the roof without the need for tools. This is one of the four nest box designs we currently use. We’ll review some of the different designs in a future issue of the blog.
Boggler Answer
Northern House Wrens. When the baby spiders hatch they may act as a form of natural pest control by eating mites and other nest parasites.