Junior Bluebird Monitors

Wednesday, we went to Harris Lake for their Junior Bluebird Monitoring program. What fun. I can't believe we were the only family to do it. The ranger was fun and had a lot of interesting activities for them to do.


One of the activities she did was throw multi-colored pasta all around the ground and the kids had to fill each egg carton mouth so many pieces of pasta in a short period of time to see what it is like to feed baby birds.

We hiked around the park and monitored the bluebird boxes. Some were empty and some had old nests. The kids learned that you approach from the side and knock first so birds can fly out. We had a nuthatch fly out of our first box! Then we looked in the boxes and determined what bird had a nest there. Just because it's a bluebird box doesn't mean a bluebird will be the bird to choose it. Our boxes had bluebirds, nuthatches and wrens! The ranger said she found a snake in a box once.
We had to learn a lot about nests. Some birds make shallow nests and some deep nests. Some use mud and some don't. Because different birds have the same color and size eggs and you don't always see the parent bird, you have to know your nests.