2021 Fall Chimney Swift Counts in Delaware County
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2021 Fall Chimney Swift Counts in Delaware County

For the nineteenth consecutive year, I counted migrating Chimney Swifts as I watched seven chimneys at six locations inside the city of Delaware and one additional chimney in Galena, Ohio. Swifts dropped in only six of the eight chimneys as they sought safe vertical walls with rough surfaces to cling to for the night. The…

2021 Delaware Co. Kestrel Nesting Season
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2021 Delaware Co. Kestrel Nesting Season

The human side of the American Kestrel’s 2021 nesting season involved thirteen trips where Dick Phillips drove more than twenty miles from his home in eastern Delaware County to my home in Delaware, Ohio. Then, after we loaded my fiberglass extension ladder and other materials into Dick’s truck, we traveled more than fifty miles along…

2021 Prothonotary Warbler Season At Alum Creek Lake
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2021 Prothonotary Warbler Season At Alum Creek Lake

The 2021 PROW season at the northern end of Alum Creek Lake near Kilbourne had its unique moments. I use my extra wide 12-foot Old Town canoe to maintain and monitor 45 nestboxes and nestjars along a one-mile stretch of the lake’s shoreline.   All nest structures are mounted on five-foot-lengths of 1-1/4-inch PVC water pipe….

Smith Park Nestbox Production in 2021
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Smith Park Nestbox Production in 2021

On March 16, 2021, I visited my twenty nestboxes that are spaced 25 yards apart in a drainage ditch that borders the east side of Troy Road while a popular asphalt bike and hike trail also follows the ditch. Young deciduous trees stand close enough to the ditch to provide hunting perches for resident Eastern…