From gtjames1940 at yahoo.com  Wed Sep  1 00:04:31 2010
From: gtjames1940 at yahoo.com (gordon james)
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:04:31 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Bluebird-babble] End-Of-Season Reporting to Cornell
In-Reply-To: <8CD17311549864F-2024-4A02@Webmail-m120.sysops.aol.com>
Message-ID: <407765.45787.qm@web113501.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>

Dear Mr. Kingery:Thank you for all your work on our Bluebird Project.I do wonder what we would think of wrens if a pair drove out bluebirds from a box (and I hope that I am not viewed as a pariah for asking about that)? ?One could always say "let nature take its course", but I'm sure you know that such things are not so simple (e.g. some very complex relationships in ecosystems are discussed in the book How the Earthquake Bird Got Its Name, and other tales of an unbalanced nature, by H. H. Shugart).?
We had two wren nests, 12 tree swallow nests, and one western bluebird nest. ?One of those wren nests came on later and was built right on top of a TRES nest, so they obviously evicted the TRES. ?We did not interfere with the wrens, as there has not been any instructions to do so.As an aside, I was exchanging emails about information and the joys of monitoring birdhouses with Bet Zimmerman--an avid bluebird person back east (an e. coast state I think); she said that the top predators in her project are wrens.But "whatever", I guess.Sincerely, Gordon James

--- On Tue, 8/31/10, Hugh Kingery <ouzels8 at aol.com> wrote:

From: Hugh Kingery <ouzels8 at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Bluebird-babble] End-Of-Season Reporting to Cornell
To: bluebird-babble at denveraudubon.org
Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 8:36 AM


In our yard with ten boxes, Western Bluebirds nested in two, one pair renested; all fledged young. When we first put up the boxes 13 years ago, Mountain Bluebirds nested, but they made no appearance this year, though they may have nested in one or two boxes of our neighbors.


House Wrens appropriated five boxes initially. 


Tree Swallows started in two boxes, and House Wrens drove them out of all, though they didn't actually nest in all 7 -- they kept some in order to keep out other hole-nesting rivals. The pair of Tree Swallows finally picked a box on our corral fence. When we peered in one Saturday, peering out at us was a very contented Bullsnake. 


So our producetion is about ten Western Bluebirds, two dozen House Wrens, and a well-fed Bullsnake.






Hugh and Urling Kingery 

Franktown, CO











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