A snack for his babies

On 29 June 2015, a small group of us met at 6:30 pm and went SW of the city with Don Stiles, who has been a dedicated Mountain Bluebird Monitor for something like 38 years! It was around 10:00 pm when I finally arrived home. The light was not good for photos, at least not with my camera, and of course, the later it got and the light faded, the worse they turned out.

This drive is an annual trip along Don’s Bluebird Route. We get the chance to see Mountain Bluebirds, Tree Swallows and Wrens nesting in various wooden nesting boxes along the country roads. Some boxes have eggs in the nest, others have tiny babies all packed tightly together. One of the boxes had a female Tree Swallow adult in it, too, and, as it hadn't been banded before, Don demonstrated how he carefully puts a metal band around the tiny leg/foot.

At the one particular Bluebird box, Mom and Dad were waiting nearby, insects in their beaks ready to feed their babies as soon as we had finished. They are such good parents.

Along the route, we saw a few other birds and animals, including a pair of beautiful American Goldfinches, various Blackbirds and a few ducks. We were lucky to see several Elk, too, that were wild.

Many thanks, as always, Don, for letting us come along with you. It is an evening I look forward to every year, and I could tell how much everyone enjoyed themselves.

In Bluebirds, the blue colour is produced by the structure of the feather - there is no blue pigment. "Tiny air pockets in the barbs of feathers can scatter incoming light, resulting in a specific, non-iridescent color. Blue colors in feathers are almost always produced in this manner. Examples include the blue feathers of Bluebirds, Indigo Buntings, Blue Jay's and Steller's Jays."

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mountain_Bluebird/id

www.jstor.org/discover/pgs/index?id=10.2307/4077277&i...

For anyone who might wonder if a baby bird is handled, will its parents pick up my scent and abandon it? The answer below is from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

A. It's a myth that parent birds will abandon young that have been touched by humans—most birds have a poor sense of smell, and birds in general identify their young using the same cues we humans do—appearance and sound. It's perfectly safe to pick up a fallen nestling and put it back in the nest, or to carry a fledgling out of danger and place it in a tree or shrub." Same would apply to bird banding.

NO BIRD OR WILD ANIMAL SHOULD EVER BE KEPT AS A PET!

Maybe I should add that, of course, only a person monitoring Bluebirds should ever open a nesting box.