I maintain and monitor 57 nestboxes on the Delaware Wildlife Area along Panhandle Road in Delaware County, land managed by the Ohio Division of Wildlife to provide hunting opportunities for licensed citizens. One pair of boxes stands east of the nearby parking lot while 55 boxes occupy eight rows that number from two to eight boxes per row and most of the boxes are spaced 25 yards from their neighbors to form a grid. The grid’s boxes occupy five acres and are spaced according to nesting territories required by Tree Swallows that produced 222 young from 57 nests in 2021.
To preserve the best environment for pheasant and rabbit hunters, the boxes and baffles are removed before early September and are stored on my back porch in Delaware. The steel posts remain in the grid and are able to withstand unintentional stray shotgun pellets.
Returning the boxes and baffles before the second week of March is early enough to attract returning Tree Swallows, but I always return six or more boxes to the area during the earliest days of February in order to attract Eastern Bluebirds. Rabbit hunting season is active through February and deer archery season’s last day is February 8, so I wear hunters’ orange and I cancel my plans if I find parked cars in the area that belong to hunters.
I returned six nestboxes along Panhandle Road on February 1, and as I arrived at the parking lot that is located near the locked gate that prevents through-traffic on Panhandle Road, I noticed four birds that were perched on the utility wire that was strung from an electric pole along the road to its destination pole near the lake shore where water pumps are used to pump water from the lake to create the wetland to the east. Before I parked my car, one of the birds dropped to a small tree nearby. At the time, I did not recognize the perched birds.
I first went about returning boxes B-26 and B-27 to their posts east of the parking lot. The boxes are not part of the grid and are mounted five yards apart to form a set of paired boxes that hopefully will host a Tree Swallow nest in one box, and a bluebird nest in the other.
After installing the paired boxes, I walked back to my hobby car, a 1998 Saturn-SL with its passenger seat removed, to unload boxes B-1 and B-2 and two baffles that will make up the most northern row in the grid. I had just locked my car when another car pulled into the lot, and after a good conversation with a dog owner that was going to supervise his two radio-equipped canines as they explored the available habitats, I crossed the road, and as I walked west toward B-1’s post, I looked up to finally identify the birds perched on the utility wire; they were bluebirds.
After reinstalling B-1, I started to walk toward B-2’s post 25 yards away and the bluebirds dropped from their wire perch into a small tree nearby. They were now closer than before.
As I gently lowered the baffle onto its post, and slid the box with its wire loop onto the pipe section that was bolted to the post, I inserted the box’s carriage bolt and quickly tightened it as I kept peeking at the bluebirds. Before I tightened the front panel’s screw, I had come to the conclusion that the bluebird’s were excited about the reinstalled nestboxes.
Nonetheless, my mind refocused on my remaining two boxes as I walked back to my car. I drove south 225 yards on Panhandle Road and parked. I unloaded two baffles and boxes B-56 and B-57 and walked west to install the grid’s most southern row.
When I returned to my car twenty minutes later, I started to wonder what the bluebirds were doing at the northern end of the grid. I drove a very short distance to use one of the area’s parking lots to turn around and I headed back to check on boxes B-1 and B-2.
I quickly learned that I had made a good decision since both boxes had three bluebirds on each. Both had a bluebird on its roof, and both had two bluebirds perched side-by-side as they clung to the entrance to peer into their respective cavities. The bird on B-1’s roof quickly retreated to a small tree while all others stayed on their nestboxes as they seemed to be obsessed by the new cavities in their world.
During winter months, bluebirds will roost as a group in order to stay warm by sharing body heat. Early in my conservation career, I read of several ornithologists that published their observations that stated that bluebirds return to Ohio in late February. Of course, in modern times, many people enjoy feeding bluebirds and some have bluebirds visiting their feeders and neighborhood nestboxes all year long.
I only hope the grid’s bluebirds had found adequate food, or they could have been migrating and will ultimately locate good diets. Plant communities with rose bushes, poison ivy, wild grapes, and several species of the genus viburnum have been found to provide fruits for bluebirds during the winter months when insects are not available.
I pledged to myself that I will check boxes B-1 and B-2 once enough of the road’s snow and ice melts to allow me safe access to the area. I returned on February 11 to install the second northern row of grid boxes when I saw a bluebird land on B-2’s roof. After I installed the new row’s last box, I checked B-1’s and B-2’s nest cavities and found fecal material in B-2, proving that it had been used as a winter roost. Yes, the boxes are not only nestboxes, they are also winter roost boxes.
Try to do all you can to help our wintering birds.
Conserve on!
