All,

Jane Frigo conducted the last box check of the season on September 3.  The final figures are as follows:

• Breeding Summary-  Detailed summary attached.

  • 52 Total Nest Sites

  • 80 Total Nesting Attempts

  • 301 Total Eggs

  • 247 Total Young

  • 197 Total Fledglings

• Below are final figures by species for all attempts:

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Thanks so much to all of you for your dedication this year, persisting despite hot weather, golfers, the fickle NestWatch app, and my inept attempt at management.  From April 1st to September 3rd you collectively made nearly 1,300 nest box visits; your efforts were responsible for the fledging of nearly 200 birds!

A special thanks to:

• Dave Singletary, who built the initial model of the new box type.  Dave provided wood for the sides, backs, roofs, and fronts.

• Ellis Maxey, who built 30 new boxes (all of which got 3 coats of paint); Ellis installed around 16 new boxes.  He also made 20 spare tops and 20 spare bottoms for the old boxes, painted them, and eventually replaced 6 tops and 10 bottoms.

• Our trainers: Ellis and Wendy Maxey; Pete Peterman; Dave Youker.

• Cindy Schulz, who set up and monitored the SignupGenius scheduling application.

General note(s):

• FYI, I submitted our data to the Virginia Bluebird Society.  It took some finagling because their format is different, but I was able to come up with some formulas that I can use in the future to convert from NestWatch format to the VBS format.  I attached a copy of the report just so you could see all the different parameters that they track (just zoom in and look across the top row).  It’s a more detail-oriented report than NestWatch’s, but that level of detail can be useful if you’re looking for trends.

• If the Bluebird fledge rate seems a little low, it actually is lower than NestWatch’s reported rate of 78.1% for our region in 2023.  I will be looking at our “problem boxes” and trying to see if there are any trends that indicate issues we can do something about (e.g., increase or change predator controls).

• NestWatch:

  • I deeply appreciate you putting up with the app’s issues.  While the app is a pain, I hope you see the value in the detailed data it provides for the Cornell Lab as well as for our own use via easily retrievable reports generated by the website.  Additionally I designed a spreadsheet to convert the NestWatch Breeding Summary report data into the VBS format, so that helps me submit data to VBS without a lot of extra work.

  • I spent a lot of time on the NestWatch website reviewing and revising some of our data.  There were often duplicated visit entries (this is NOT your fault, it’s the app!) that I had to delete.  When summarizing nesting attempts; I also spent a considerable  time on that reviewing the attempt, sometimes tweaking the data (particularly first egg, hatch, and fledging dates).  Ensuring accurate summaries is important as it’s the source for much of the key data that both NestWatch & VBS track.

Future plans:

• Boxes on the Deer Run course:

  • You may or may not be aware that in addition to the 52 boxes on the Cardinal course, there are 53 boxes on the Deer Run course.  Obviously we did not actively monitor the Deer Run boxes this year; the boxes were repaired for the 2024 season to enable continued use by nesting birds.   They do need to be cleaned out this fall and repaired or replaced for next season.

  • After much reflection about the additional workload active monitoring of the Deer Run course would incur, I’m not inclined to actively monitor them next year, but just continue to maintain the boxes for use by the birds (as we did this year).

• Construction and Maintenance team:  I don’t have the room for supplies or a working area/tools to construct new boxes, so I’m looking for volunteers to form a Construction & Maintenance team.  Please let me know if you’d like to be on the team and/or serve as its leader.

• Survey to come:  I plan to send out a quick survey soon to get your feedback and suggestions for how things might be improved.

Thanks again for all you’ve done,

Bill