Bluebird

The male bluebird has made another appearance. I wonder if he will bring his brood when they fledge. The first full year we were here, I thought the bluebirds were nesting in the box because they were always around, and one day was happy to see three little grayish-blue bluebirds hopping around. That was July 18, 2021. I read somewhere that cleaning the box might encourage them to breed again the same year, but when I opened the box I found nothing. No nest. Bluebirds did nest there in 2022. Last year they were chased away by the swallows, but made a few visits after the swallows fledged. The same thing might be happening this year.

The swallows are still around, but are not as territorial as they were in May when they were trying to drive everything away, not just the nesting competitor bluebirds but also the big magpies and crows. I don't remember seeing little fledglings last year. Once they leave the nest, I think they are gone from the area.

After a few windy days just letting the Gardepro T5CF #14 handle everything, I put out the Canon 5D Mark III #8 with the 100-400mm zoom, this time zoomed out to 100mm and set closer to the bath. See the post from later today for those images. To avoid the camera noise scaring the birds, it is set on single shot. I would love to set the old 1D right next to the bath with a wide angle lens and have it do a 12-shot burst in less than two seconds, but that sounds like a machine gun being fired. All the birds flee by frame 3. I do have my spouse's R10 mirrorless camera which might be a solution, but I need to wrap it up so it doesn't get guano on it or I would never hear the end of it.

I had a lot of images to go through since last night because a robin plopped down right in front of the camera and stood/sat there for 15 minutes. Which doesn't sound that long, but it was long enought to fire off 900 images. That's one image per second. Here's one.

And the obligatory flicker, standing tall.