Oddities of 2025

Virginie Hrodland
il y a 2 jours
4 min de lecture

2025 was a yet again busy season with the highest occupancy of our boxes and because we're in phase 2 of the nest temperature experiment of the big collaborative project led by Dr. Knutie at University of Connecticut. This season was focused on manipulating the temperature of the nests after hatching (instead of during incubation like in 2024) with heat, ice, or control packs. We still recorded the temperature of the nests with dime-sized temperature recorders called iButtons. And again, we took all kinds of measurements and samples: body temperature, mass, length of wing, length of feather sheath, length of beak, length of tarsus, little blood sample, poop sample, and 2 feathers. The season was certainly without its challenges. Predators (raccoons, rat snakes) were particularly active in 2025 and we had to add baffles and grease more poles than we've ever had to before. And even then, it wasn't always sufficient. For example, a pair tried 6 times between 2 boxes before finally raising 4 kids successfully to fledging in a box we moved and greased the pole of.

We also encountered some oddities and exciting nests and I invite you to check my Instagram account (@jonesborobluebird trail) for pictures. For example,

Janet was back for her 5th nesting season, at the same box (#15), with the same partner. She raised three broods.
Janet's old neighbor, Florence (in box #16), who lost her long-time mate, switched to a young guy (Frederick) who was more interested in the cat living in the trailer next to the box than in his partner but they managed to raised a full brood. Then, Frederick disappeared and Florence another young guy, Gregory, whom we were never able to catch. Only one of 5 eggs hatched. For the 3rd round, we saw Gregory around, but it seems like it was another neighbor (from box #14) who sired her last 4 kids of the season.
One pair, somehow, managed to lay 8 eggs in 2 boxes (4 in each) and after some hesitation decided to incubate in one but would still visit the other.
Remember Betty and her brown plumage in 2022? Well, we may have found some of her relatives. We found one brown kid in box #224 sired by a male who had hatched in box #419 in 2024. And guess what? His father also had a brown kid in 2025 in box #419!
We've encountered for the first time some sort of ticks that latched onto the lip of chicks.
For the first time in all my monitoring years, we had several nests with either white or pink eggs. Always cool to see!
For the first time ever and I had never heard of such thing, we found two clutches of 7 eggs, and one of the two pairs managed to hatch and raise all 7 kiddos!
For the first time, we found plastic in a bluebird nest. We had seen that in sparrow nests (they tend to use human trash) but it was a first for bluebirds.
We found several bluebird nests full of seeds, suggesting that insects were not quite as abundant and they had to turn to berries, which aren't as nutritious for the quick growth of nestlings.
Fun fact: we noticed that a hatchling is about the weight of one piece of paper towel!