Bluebird in the Chickadee's Nest

On 28 April 2018 I photographed an anomaly in the bluebird box: One bluebird egg, and the others, much smaller, white with copper spots. Bluebirds had built the nest -- I watched them. But after one egg (usually they lay five) the bluebirds split the scene or were evicted and a black-capped chickadee took over. I confirmed it was a chickadee when I saw the mom flee the box as I approached, and bluebirds don't have downy white feathers to line their nests with.

I check the bluebird box about every three weeks to make sure all is healthy and clean. (I've found snakes in there, bees, a bat, etc.) I thought, surely the chickadee mother would ignore the bluebird egg or starve the bluebird baby, or peck it to death,  if it survived. But on 19 May I opened the box again, thinking I'd surely find at least one dead baby bird, and maybe all of them, considering. I found a nest full of life.

Here's the egg photo, what it looked like three weeks ago. We might have lost some baby chickadees, but gained a bluebird:

A Really Good Morning

This misty morning, 7 a.m,  after thunderstorms last night, was so dreamlike I took the creaky old Nikon (2004) and not the phone, because the Nikon has great optics, to photograph the marvelous drifting clouds of mist. As I approached the bluebird box, a pair of dark anxious eyes appeared at its opening. Bluebirds like and want to settle in the wooden bluebird boxes humans make; they thrive where humans plow and mow, allowing the birds to locate crawling things they can pin down and eat. I remove and scrub out the bluebird box twice a year (have found bats, snakes, piles of thorny sticks, and a colony of bees); and properly made bluebird boxes can be opened by the side panel for inspection by landlords such as myself. I came closer yet, raising the camera, and out the bluebird flew.

Then I unhooked the side of the box and gently removed the nest, and in it found five baby bluebirds in a warm little heap, breathing and sleeping, and took a photo only the Nikon, not the phone, can take, and here it is.

Three Kinds of Prairie Blue

Nature news from the Shaw Nature Reserve, where I took a morning walk yesterday with a group called Wednesday Walkers, a self-selected group of people with time for about a two-mile walk, led by a nature instructor, along one of the many paths in the Reserve's 2800 acres of mixed prairie, forest, wetlands, rocky cliffs and glades. We chatted and asked questions as we walked. I heard that 2013 had been an excellent year for bluebirds. Volunteers maintain the Reserve's many birdhouses (pictured: Apartment #74) and count the eggs and babies. In 2013, exactly 203 chicks were hatched in the Reserve's bluebird boxes; 180 of them were bluebirds. "What were the rest?" I asked. "Finches and sparrows," was the answer.

As we walked, sun beating down on a shadeless path cut through stiffly waving five-foot native prairie grasses, someone asked, "What kind of grass is this?"

"Bluestem. If you look way down the stem, toward the ground, the stems are blue." Wow! (Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) is, by the way, the state grass of Missouri.)

"And what are these?" I asked when I saw strange but somehow familiar black walnut-sized pods among the five-foot prairie grasses.
"Wild indigo." Snapping the stem when the wild indigo is young yields blue juice that can be used to dye cloth, a discovery the Indians shared with the European settlers. The seed pods aren't really black; they're dark blue, and they look familiar because florists use them in autumn arrangements and wreaths.

Fledge

A curious young being, so young it isn't blue yet, peeks out of my bluebird box. I would love to know its thoughts about the green and blue world outside the box. Tomorrow I will try for another photo.