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Common Myths Associated with Bluebird Monitoring...
There are several myths that monitors must dispel in order to reach a high production potential for their boxes:
1) Moderate disturbances will cause bluebirds (and other cavity nesting songbirds) to abandon their nests.
This is so untrue. This myth, very common in the general public, has been used forever by parents and others to keep children from vandalizing nests. It may serve a good function from that standpoint, but beyond that goal, the idea is worthless.
It should first be noted that perching birds (= passerines) can smell but, “residual human scent on eggs and nest does not deter the parental instincts of passerines (Gill 2007)”. Their sensory existence is mainly limited to sight and hearing. When one opens a nest box, therefore, and handles the eggs or young, or the adults themselves, the birds are not influenced by smell.
In fact, bird banders have captured both adults and young in the nest for decades, taken them out to band them, held them firmly to affix the band and then released (adults) or replaced them in the nests—all with only rare mishaps. And bluebird monitors don’t come close to traumatizing juveniles & adults in this way.
Moreover, Audubon monitors have found 42 starving chicks in nests in ’05 & ’06 and have moved them to other nests with young. In 37 of 42 cases, the adults adopted and raised these foreign chicks successfully. Had smell or disturbance been a problem, they would have rejected these fostered chicks. By the way, the five birds that died were all exceptionally weak when put into the adoptive nests, and didn’t have much of a chance for survival anyway.
Still not convinced? I will give you two more examples:
In two instances (wrens nearby & gas pipeline being put in), nest boxes with eggs had to be moved up to 200’ from the original site. Instead of abandoning the eggs, both hens followed the boxes, incubated & hatched all eggs successfully and also successfully fledged all young.
One day I moved a box with 5, 10 day old chicks (unknown to me), tossed it in the back of my trailer and transported it 15 miles to a site where I wanted to put up the box. To my horror, I discovered there were chicks in the box and rushed back to the original site and put in post, guard and box under the watchful eyes of both bluebird parents. The box was away from the original nest site for 3 hours. In spite of this maximum disturbance, the parents continued feeding & raising the young and fledged all 5 chicks.
Therefore, we sell nesting birds short. We fail to remember that in the case of cavity nesting birds, they carefully inspect the box and surrounding habitat for its reproductive potential. When the hen eventually picks the box, she has already decided (bonded to) that this is an ideal site for her to lay eggs and raise young. When she lays eggs, she has even more reproductive potential for her future (additional bonding) and when the chicks hatch, hell has to freeze over to get her and the rooster to abandon those young (maximum bonding).
So give the bluebird hen & rooster credit. Touch and modest disturbance of eggs, nest & young, will not cause them to abandon the nest, eggs, or young. Quite the opposite, they need your tender love & care to maximize their reproductive potential. By all means, do monitor your cavity nesting songbirds but with moderation.
2) When you place a nest box, you are placing it in a permanent position, never to move it again.
Nothing could be further from the truth. No nest box on any bluebird trail should be considered permanent unless it is attracting bluebirds! To do otherwise is to focus on your ego that is saying: “this place will be absolutely ideal for bluebirds”. Well, I am sorry, but if bluebirds don’t build in your house, they are saying, “sorry, monitor, I don’t like where you placed the box—I can’t raise young in these conditions”. Don’t you owe it to them to put it in a place where they can nest?
I support the contention that “every nest box put up for bluebirds should afford a maximum opportunity to attract them. If you agree, then I recommend these principles of placement/moving boxes: “Any time you place a box in a new location, let it go a season and then until the end of April in the following season. Our experience with Audubon nest boxes is that 90% of all boxes that will be built in during the season, will be built in by the end of April.”
By moving any boxes that have had no bluebird nests in them by the end of April the 2nd season the boxes are in place, you have essentially given them two seasons to attract bluebirds, but can then place them in a new position that still has a chance to attract a pair for the remainder of the 2nd season.
3) Noise will prevent successful nesting in bluebirds.
To me, it was surprising to find that bluebirds tolerate high levels of noise. The first insight I got about this fact was placement of a nest box in a park along a heavily traveled street on the west edge of Plover, WI. This box has been in place for four years and has successfully produced broods all four years and successful double broods in the past three years.
Armed with this experience, I selected a “very noisy site” along Hwy. 54 between Plover and Wisconsin Rapids. This site has thousands of automobiles passing along it (100-200’ from the boxes) each day and up to 11, 100-box car, freight trains, passing within 50-100’ of the boxes each day. In an experiment in 2005, I placed four boxes along the tracks and three of the boxes produced bluebirds. In 2006 I expanded the trail to 36 boxes and 30 of them produced bluebirds. Noise was not a significant factor in limiting the production of bluebirds in this situation.
What was most important was the habitat I selected. It consisted of a highway with a swath of vegetation of about 50’ kept cut low (made it ideal for ease of insect observation), 20-30’ high electrical wires overhead for perch hunting, short trees in front of the boxes for adults to perch on prior to entering the box with food and for young to fly to when they fledge, and railroad tracks with short grass hunting sites on both sides of the track. In spite of the noise levels, an excellent and productive habitat for bluebirds.
4) One should not put boxes next to roadways for fear of bluebird adults/young being killed by passing cars.
The majority of boxes on the Audubon Trail are along roadways. I know of no adult or fledgling that has ever been killed by an automobile (we have produced 5,558 young in 5 years of study). On the contrary, moderately traveled roads provide a great opportunity to raise successful broods and are safe to stop along. Heavily traveled roads (see #3) can be outstanding for raising bluebirds but hazardous to stop along.
5) One has to monitor nest boxes only once every two weeks or a month.
This myth is being perpetuated by those who either don’t have a commitment to monitoring songbirds or is over-committed, and lacks the time to do so. When one “takes on” the responsibility of nest box monitoring, it should mean a several hour commitment at least once/week. Anything less and the necessary commitment is lacking and monitoring should not be undertaken by a person under those circumstances.
When one assumes the responsibility for monitoring a nest box, you assume the responsibility to do what you can, to see that the natural cycle of the songbird is completed without interference from humans or other predators. Monitoring once per week assures:
1) accurate collection of data
2) nests and/or eggs will be removed from inactive boxes
3) removal of wet nests or wet nests with eggs or chicks can be replaced with dry nests
4) dying chicks can be removed and fostered into nests with healthy young
5) finding and controlling acute problems such as black fly infestations and
6) fixing nest boxes, posts or guards that might have been damaged and that are threatening the safety of the songbirds in question.
Natural History Information for Cavity Nesting Songbirds. Read more >>