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Re: Bobwhite and bluebird box? & Maine birding



On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Kaye Fenlon wrote:
> >
> saddens me so that I hear none now when I am in Ohio visiting my Mom. She
> has 5 acres still bordering some farmland and she has talked about letting
> a big part of her yard grow into a planted wildflower field or grass. There
> is only one farm hedge row left just behind her property. I do not know if
> this would be enough cover for them or not. Thanks!

Five acres probably isn't enough to sustain a population by itself.
However, if there are Bobwhite still living somewhere in the neighborhood,
within a mile or three of your mom's place, then 5 acres is more than
enough to support several families. Worth trying for a few years, at
least.

> >I was under the impression that the bluebirds would not return  to start a
> second brood if you did not clean out the box. I guess this is not so??

Apparently not, according to what I read. This was a second-hand report, I
haven't read the published report of these folks from Kentucky yet.

> few new warbler species to my list. Northern Parula and Blackburnian  (both
> of which I saw very close), and Black-throated green.

Birders in Massachusetts are apparently very concerned about Blackburnians
now. An Asian bug called a wooly Adelgid is rapidly killing off the
Hemlock trees which are the bird's main nesting habitat. Another species
of wooly Adelgid is what killed off the Fraser Firs in the Blue Ridge and
Great Smoky mountains.

> >Just before a thunderstorm one eve we heard the loon really wailing!
> Waking up to their yodels each morning was a little bit of heaven!

I was a camp counselor in Maine one summer several years back, on a lake.
Loons yodeled all night, we could hear them from our cabins. The only way
to sleep...

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/