Bluebird Monitoring at Booker T. Washington National Monument

Article by Dick Hendrix:

On April 27, 8 Master Naturalists had the opportunity to learn about bluebird trail monitoring at Booker T Washington NM.  Dick Hendrix gave a short presentation about the monitoring process on this trail.  We establish bluebird trails because natural habitat for bluebirds and other cavity nesters is disappearing.  He reviewed the protocols for monitoring the trail to keep the birds safe and to accurately record data which will be forwarded on to the Virginia Bluebird society.

We then took the opportunity to do a weekly monitoring of the 16 bluebird boxes on the trail.  Participants were able to look into all of the houses and record the data that they saw.  We had an interesting hour or so roaming throughout the Park looking into houses.  There was a wide variety of nesting experiences that the group had the opportunity to observe.  There was bluebird nesting activity in about half of the 16 boxes on the trail.  We got to see many different stages of nesting activity – completed nests with no eggs, completed nests with 5 eggs, a nest where chicks were hatching as we looked into the nest, a nest with chicks about 1-2 days old, a nest with chicks about 5-7 days old, and a nest with a mother bird sitting on the nest giving us the stink eye because we looked into the box and disturbed her.  We have several pictures taken by Wayne Barnes showing these different stages.