Checked & cleaned by Jan & Bob Richardson the afternoon of October 20/24
Bob and I had a great afternoon in the Big Valley area yesterday.
On the drive south, we saw two eagles and hundreds of geese and swans, and then we did our Nature Club volunteerism.
We got lots of exercise hopping in and out of the SUV to go through the ditch to check & clean the boxes. Bob did amazingly well on all that uneven ground! Thankfully, it was Bob, who lifted the lid on one box only to find a mouse (all hale & hardy) looking right back at him. My surprise was finding seven little swallow eggs that had been abandoned (photo above). That was in the very last box I checked. Having been told that the wren nest would be constructed entirely with twigs, it was easily identifiable once we found the first one. Fun!
We also made note of how many boxes need repair or replacement. Something for Odd-Job-Bob to do this spring, perhaps?!?!? When we finished our four-mile stretch, we toured a few more back roads before going to the Big Valley Community Hall for their annual Fall Supper... which was delicious, and we saw lots of people to visit.
I'm pretty sure it was a red-tailed hawk that held our attention for a while as it floated above a pastured field southeast of Big Valley in the late afternoon. On our drive home, we saw a number of mule deer and more geese and swans.
Certainly, we'd do this again.
Jan Richardson
Tree Swallows = 16 boxes seem to have been these birds... we assumed Fledge Successful, but saw very little evidence of egg shells... sometimes poop, however... until #44 where 7 eggs were abandoned.
House Wren = 3 boxes had the twig nest... one was many inches deep with twigs.
Mountain Bluebird = 3 boxes seemed to represent bluebirds... we wondered about two others
House Sparrow = 3 were nests of sparrows
Deer Mouse = 5 had a lot of of mouse droppings, one had a significant amount of what we thought was deer hair woven in with the straw in making a nest
Empty = 7
Notes about state of boxes:
Boxes 1, 5, 7, 29, 30, 38 and 43 had poor or missing roofs (some of them missing floors as well).
We didn't find boxes 24 or 39
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