Beginning in early April, the birds in our mountain area get very busy as it is the onset of their breeding season. Our resident chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, etc. are starting to sing and drum, set up territories, and even beginning to excavate nests. At the same time, the birds that spent the winter in Mexico and further south are starting to return. Among the first to arrive will likely be the Tree Swallows and Mountain Bluebirds, and soon, right behind them in the next couple of weeks will be the Violet-green Swallows and Western Bluebirds. And, of course, then there will be an on-going parade of arriving migrants all the way into the beginning of June.

There have already been reports of Mountain Bluebirds at Elk Meadow in the vicinity of Evergreen Audubon nest boxes. Although sometimes our April snowstorms cause the bluebirds to retreat briefly to the edge of the foothills, they come back upslope as warm weather returns. The more experienced bluebirds will be ready to build nests around the first week of May and, if there isn’t a snowstorm, they will have young near the end of May.

We at Evergreen Audubon get particularly excited about these early arrivals because they are all cavity-nesters requiring old woodpecker holes or something comparable, e.g. nestboxes, for nesting. In the absence of sufficient cavities, competition for nest sites can be significant and some birds can lose out.  For almost thirty years, Evergreen Audubon has worked to mitigate this competition by providing nestboxes in several of our local montane meadows and then monitoring the nesting success of the birds using those boxes. When necessary, we have taken steps to maintain or relocate any boxes torn down by bears and elk or disturbed by the presence of people. 

This year we are simplifying the weekly monitoring process which, in the past, has regularly taken a team of volunteers several hours.  Most of the 20 nestboxes at Alderfer/Three Sisters and 39 nestboxes at Elk Meadow have been relocated. They are now in nine distinct clusters. Volunteers will be assigned one cluster which can be monitored by hiking a short loop that is within easy reach of nearby parking.

Evergreen Audubon members have already adopted several of the clusters to monitor during the upcoming breeding season. During this monitoring process they will get to watch all aspects of the breeding season beginning with birds initially showing up in the right habitat, to males singing and setting up territories, to pair-formation, to nest-site selection, to nest building, to egg laying and incubation, to feeding young, and eventually to the young leaving the nest and being ushered into the world by their parents. During the final three weeks before the young fledge it is amazing to watch them grow from tiny naked birds with closed eyes to very hungry teenagers with brightly colored feathers like their parents. You are welcome to join them! Contact me and I will put you in touch with a monitor and nestbox cluster near you.

Community members interested in creating a cluster of nestboxes on their own property are encouraged to do so. For advice in purchasing nestboxes, setting up a cluster, and keeping track of each box’s progress, contact me at: Atlarge@EvergreenAudubon.org.  Boxes should be set up by mid-April to increase the likelihood of having a bluebird family.