 Barn swallow chicks on the porch By David Oellette – Songbird Trail Coordinator
I joined the Friends of Topsmead this year, after being a regular visitor for the last 38 years. I volunteered to start monitoring the Songbird Trail boxes. My wife decided to join me, since we both love to walk at Topsmead We had about 129 Eggs this year with a total of about 85 fledged young! NestWatch software, provided by Cornell Ornithology Lab, allowed close monitoring of each nest and the progression of the nest development. My wife kept count and manually written notes to back up the app. The Friends of Topsmead State Forest is now on the Cornell list of official NestWatch list of sites starting this year. This will allow us to share more data and also get guidance from the large worldwide membership on how to make the Songbird Trail even more productive. Most of the current boxes are along the Jefferson Hill Rd south and Topsmead Extension trail, while some are around the main house. There are 24 in total. I plan to put up at least 5 more around the fields. The bluebird nests are made of pine needles. Other birds also make use of the nesting boxes at Topsmead. The Tree Swallow nests are made of various grasses and twigs, lined with soft feathers. The Wrens have nests made of twigs of about 1/8th inch. Some of the nest boxes hosted several broods of the same species, one on top of the other. Several times I was expecting to see almost fledged chicks come flying at me when I opened the nest (really carefully) only to see a new set of eggs. Soon I will be cleaning the boxes and replacing damaged ones. There were some that got damaged by wind, mowing, and one by a bear; none of the chicks were hurt. We started our monitoring in March with the spring clean out with help from veteran songbird trail monitors Renee Betar and Jani Golding. Observations started on April 11th. It seems like only yesterday we were starting out. Now the fields are browned and silent, some mowing has been done and the Bobolinks have left. The bees are also mostly gone silent except for the clusters at the butterfly garden and the flowers at the house. The leaves on the trees have already started to show the telltale change from dark green to having light yellow in places. They will start turning soon. I saw one maple with full red leaves at the top. I will miss the weekly visits to see the little bluebirds, Tree Swallows and Wrens. They would often be disappointed seeing me, however, without any bug offering, instead of one of their parents. Speed was of the essence in checking their status. I would also normally put my phone in and take a picture, then move out of their way fast. Sometimes I would get a surprise of the mom or chick looking straight at the camera. We had about 81 chicks this year between bluebirds, Wrens and tree sparrows. The various plants, especially wildflowers, in the fields attract different size pollinators that have filled the specific niche to be able to feed on them. This, in turn, provides all the nesting birds a diversified food supply. It seems that the various birds become active as the different types of wildflowers bloom and the respective pollinators show up to take advantage of them. It was particularly interesting to see the movement of the seasons at Topsmead this year as I visit Topsmead regularly. I saw the coming of the first grasses, the wild flowers. Just after the wildflowers really bloomed, out came the bees. They were very loud when they were most active. It seemed like they only had a few weeks when the maximum number of flowers were out, so they had to get to it. Recently all the Golden Rod started blooming and almost all the other wild flowers have wilted and turned brown and gone to seed. Even the seed provides much needed food for the birds. The Blue birds are easy to identify from a distance. They are the ones who sit on the box and dive down and catch a bug, then go back on the box. The Tree Swallows and the Barn swallows swoop around and catch bugs in the air. Inspecting the tree swallow nests can be somewhat alarming at first. They like to swoop down to frighten you away. Often, they come so close you can feel their wing brush your ears. No worries though. They would not let themselves get injured. While not really monitoring them, I would check in on the barn swallows occasionally. They were very productive this year with many nests in a wide variety of spots at Topsmead and many young. They provided some of the best entertainment, swooping and hovering. They were so fast at catching bugs many parents would return at the same time, causing traffic issues. On one of the first inspections of one of the Bluebird boxes, I opened the front of the box and took a quick picture and closed it right up and walked away. I checked the picture to see what was in it, and got the surprised mom close up. It certainly set the tone for the rest of the inspections. There is something different to see throughout the seasons at Topsmead. I’m already looking eagerly ahead to next year when we will have even more places for them to nest, and plenty of food provided by the Fields of Topsmead. David Ouellette Songbird Trail Coordinator Friends of Topsmead State Forest
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The bluebird box project has been led by Janet Blauvelt, a Friends Board member and Chairperson of the Education Committee. Despite the impacts of the pandemic on operations and projects at Topsmead, she has been able to continue repairing the bluebird boxes and then checking on the occupants with a small volunteer crew. Last year she worked with local students from various schools on different aspects of the project. We hope to resume that program next season. The students helped inspect nesting boxes and recorded data on the bluebirds' and other birds' usage of them. The students also noted the boxes cleanliness and reported results to the Connecticut Bluebird Nest Box Survey and Peter Piccone, a wildlife biologist at Sessions Woods in Burlington. The boxes were built to specifications created by Art Gingert and Peter Piccone who designed the original bluebird trail at Topsmead. Students were also responsible for building new boxes and repairing old ones.
A SMALL REQUEST! The future success for bluebirds nesting in these boxes is that they feel secure doing so. The trail monitors this year have noticed some boxes left open indicating people have peeked inside. This is a critical time for the birds as they nest and lay their eggs. Leaving the boxes open can disturb this process and cause the loss of eggs or the death of young fledglings. The songbird trail is a wonderful opportunity for the everyone to view these lovely birds, but please keep your distance so we can encourage them to stay and there will be birds to watch for many seasons to come. This project owes a big debt of gratitude to staff at Topsmead from Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection who partner with us in continuing our work on the bluebird box/songbird trail. As of April of 2020, there were some nests being built in several of the boxes and baby bluebirds cannot be far behind! |
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