Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 17:03:17 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Abbie Banks Subject: Re: First Time Bluebird "Mom" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congratulations, Lynette! How exciting for you. I have been photographing the Bluebird babies daily to document the size and growth. Last year, Mike Callahan banded the babies. The nesting Bluebirds here have no bands. The BB couple this nesting have 6 hatchlings. The usual is 5. Just today, I ordered 5,000 meal worms from Grubco. I feed them these during this time. I check the box daily since it is right outside. When I monitored a Bluebird Trail, I checked the boxes approximately once a week. In previous years, I have had House Sparrows kill an entire clutch in minutes. I have two sparrow traps purchased years ago from the local Wildbird Center. When you check the nest, lift it gently to make certain there are no blowfly larva under it. Also check for ants. I place the meal worms in a small feeder near the box. You might want to document the age and therefore keep track of this because I feel it is not a good idea to open the box after the 14th day. There is a chance the babies will get out and they can't fly. I have had the young fledge as early as 16/17 days old and as late as 21 days. Is there a guard on the pole? This would help keep snakes and racoon out of the box. I have even seen squirrels munch on eggs. Other problems could be a House Wren taking the eggs out and also the eggs will be pierced. There is not much you can do about this except have a ton of wren boxes and hope the wrens keep busy building faux nests. Besides the Bluebirds, this morning the Catbird was thrilled with the mealworms. Please email privately if you want to chat Bluebirds. Again...enjoy this gift of spring. Perhaps Mike can band them. Abbie dovekie7@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================