MBTCS News & Updates
Supporting Students Redevelop a Trail in Guernsey State Park, WY
We receive the occasional inquiry about building the ideal nest box for Mountain Bluebirds and are always happy to help as best as we can. Our Trail Master was contacted in early March with questions from Wyoming for a trail redevelopment at Guernsey State Park! He went above and beyond by sending pieces for a sample MBTCS nest box at the end of March.
Trail Master’s Spring Report
Our society has approximately 2,660 nest boxes with more added as nest box trails are identified and added to the inventory. There are 103 trail monitors on record! Trail sizes are being reduced to 20 or 30 boxes each so more people can be involved.
Nest box paint: yes or no? The results are in!
In November 2017 I installed 21 new nest boxes on the Birds Eye Ranch east of Waterton Park. The land owners have seen bluebirds in the area but there have not been any nest boxes in the area for many years. Ten of the boxes were new plywood, 11 of the boxes were painted grey.
About Parasites found in Mountain Bluebird Nest Boxes
The fly larvae that feed on the young bluebirds are common flies. I collected a number of the larvae and pupae from bluebird nest boxes this summer and put them in a jar. Then I left them for a couple weeks until the adults emerged from their cocoons, and what came out? Common flies, nothing special, just the everyday flies you see everywhere in fields and around cattle.
Trail Master gradually locating, upgrading nest boxes
We have approximately 2,585 Mountain Bluebird Trails nest boxes.We have GPS coordinates for 1,990 of them, but there are 595 nest boxes included in the inventory without coordinates. Thus we have GPS co-ordinates for two-thirds of our monitored trails, and 85 active trail monitors.