Tag Archives | Oak Titmouse

It’s Time to Clean Out Your Nest Boxes

By Larry Jordan on February 20, 2024 in Birds, Conservation, Nestbox Monitoring

Birds can be attracted to your home simply by offering food, water and shelter. Trees and shrubs that yield fruit, berries, seeds, nuts and cones will provide food. Birdbaths or pools can be built to supply water, and feeders strategically placed around the yard will furnish supplementary food for the birds when natural sources diminish. Tangles of wild plants and dense undergrowth left to thrive in chosen areas of your property will provide shelter, protection, and natural nesting and roosting sites.

Adult Male Western Bluebird Feeding a Nestling

Some 84 species of North American birds, excavate nesting holes, use cavities resulting from decay (natural cavities), or use holes created by other species in dead or deteriorating trees for nesting. Many species of these cavity nesting birds have declined because of habitat reduction. But you can help.

Nuttall’s Woodpecker Nestling Ready to Fledge

Several of the birds that nest in cavities tend to be resident (non-migrating) species and thus more amenable to local habitat management practices than migratory species. Bird houses have been readily accepted by many natural cavity nesters, and increases in breeding density have resulted from providing such structures.

My Favorite Nestbox Design

There are probably as many birdhouse plans as there are cavity nesting birds. The important thing is to choose a nest box plan for the species you want to attract that can be opened and cleaned out when necessary. The photo above shows my favorite style birdhouse with a 1 1/2 inch entrance hole. It has been home to Oak Titmouse, Western Bluebird, Violet-green Swallow, Tree Swallow, White-breasted Nuthatch, House Wren, and Ash-throated Flycatcher where I live. I have made one improvement to this design by altering the side door to open from the top rather than the bottom. This allows you to check on the nestlings from the top without opening the door all the way. Here is a nest box specifications chart and several nest box plans.

Oak Titmouse Nestlings

I cannot emphasize the importance of monitoring any nest box you may place in your yard, or anywhere else for that matter. There are three prime objectives for monitoring nestboxes. First and foremost, with regular, frequent visits to each nestbox, you may be able to spot problems threatening your tenants. You may be able to intervene so as to protect the adults and increase the nestlings’ chances for survival. Second, you can develop a body of knowledge about the habits of cavity-nesters. Lastly, you will build a dated record of each visit to the nestbox that will remind you of the age of the nestlings in the box you are approaching, and what’s been going on at the box during the previous weeks. This record will help you understand and interpret the present visit. And the best reason to monitor your nest box – it’s fun!

Oak Titmouse on the Nest

One of the most important aspects of nest box monitoring is cleaning out the box after each nesting. RIGHT NOW, before nesting season begins, all nest boxes should be checked to make sure they are clean and ready for occupancy. Your nest boxes should have been cleaned out back in August, after the last completed nesting of whatever species used them. Since then, it is likely that those nest boxes have been used as places to roost during cold weather, accumulating bird droppings. Below is a typical dirty box that has been used as a roost.

This is an American Kestrel box that has never been used. I recently checked it and found a wasp nest inside. They are usually attached to the roof on the inside of the box. Birds won’t use a box with wasps inside. If you find a wasp nest in your nest box, use a thin spatula and crush the wasp nest against the roof of the box. If you don’t kill the adult wasp, she will soon return and rebuild. Keep checking to make sure the wasps don’t return.

This is a nest box that was used by Tree Swallows. This one apparently had two successful nestlings but wasn’t cleaned out between them. You can see the two distinct flattened nests stacked on top of each other bringing any new nesting attempt closer to the entrance hole and therefore easier for a predator to reach eggs or nestlings.

This is a great time to check and clean any birdhouses you have. It’s also the perfect time to repair any damaged boxes and get them ready for the new season before the birds arrive. Believe it or not, birds like a clean house, just like you and I!

If you are interested in monitoring nestboxes for Shasta Birding Society this upcoming season, contact Larry Jordan at webmaster@shastabirdingsociety.org

The Gifts of the Oaks

By Dan Greaney on August 1, 2021 in BirdWords

Oak Tree

The earliest oak tree fossils, found in what is now the eastern US, are dated from twenty-five million years ago. Since then oaks have diversified around the globe, where they provide a wealth of food and shelter in support of a variety of rich, diverse ecosystems.

Western Bluebird Male

Several types of oaks make the North State home. Valley oaks deck our waterways with the majestic art of massive trunks and branches. Live oaks provide green foliage year round. Black oaks finger into conifers, painting our lower mountains with streaks and fields of autumn golds. But in the bathtub ring around the Central Valley, the foothills below the cooling mountain altitudes but above historic waterways, in the land of summer heat and drought, it is the blue oaks that dominate and define much of the landscape.

Female Lesser Goldfinch Feeding Nestlings

As one of the few trees that can populate this seasonally harsh environment, blue oaks are home to a vast variety of life forms. Their summer leaves, gone bluish and leathery to protect from water loss, are often studded with starbursts of galls, the nests of tiny wasps and flies. Studies on the blue oak’s Midwest cousins have shown as many as five hundred fifty-seven species of caterpillars on a single tree. As larvae and pupae these insects are life-sustaining for the birds that pick them from leaf and twig and trunk, variably to raise their young, fuel migration, and survive the winter–nuthatches, titmice, wrens, kinglets, warblers, vireos, and orioles. When the insects morph into adults with wings, they similarly feed flycatchers, hummingbirds, bluebirds, swallows, and waxwings.

Oak Titmouse Approaches Nest with Grub for Nestlings

Oak Titmouse Approaches Nest with Insect for Nestlings

Downy woodpeckers join oak tree specialists–the theatrical acorn woodpeckers, beautiful Lewis’s woodpeckers, and trilling Nuttall’s woodpeckers–in picking beetle larvae, ants, and termites from the trees, and in making homes in the long-standing soft wood of dying oak branches–homes that are used for nesting by most of the birds already feeding on the oaks, plus a variety of owls and a falcon.

Great Horned Owl with Owlets Nesting in an Oak Tree

But none of this vitality even mentions the defining characteristic of oaks: acorns! Acorns are packed with proteins and fats and calories in general. Woodpeckers, band-tailed pigeons, scrub-jays, and turkeys are only some of their gourmands. Deer and bears feast on them. Gophers, mice, and ground squirrels chomp on fallen acorns, and in turn are eaten by bobcats, foxes, coyotes, and hawks. Yet more insects infest the acorns, and are eaten by reptiles, amphibians, and ground-feeding birds–sparrows, towhees, and quail.

California Scrub-Jay Atop an Oak with an Acorn

Acorns are also devoured by cattle, who prefer grazing and resting near and under the oaks, and gain weight faster in oak-rich grasslands.

As a foundation for so much life, oaks truly are Giving Trees, and the blue oaks have a particularly special place for us in the North State.

Homes for Birds, Yard by Yard

By Dan Greaney on January 26, 2019 in BirdWords, Conservation

Hermit Thrush

For birds, yard after yard after yard adds up to a lot of potential homes. Backyard sanctuaries are pleasant for people, too, and fairly easy to provide. Just consider the basic elements of habitat: food, water, and shelter.

Providing food does not require filling feeders. Feeders can be fun because they draw birds for easy viewing, but they also require periodic cleaning to minimize spreading disease—say, once a month with a nine to one water to bleach solution. Hummingbird feeders require cleaning and refreshing every 2-3 days in the summer.

Plants will feed birds with less fuss. Berries and seeds on shrubs, grasses, and trees are all natural food supplies. Flowers, especially tubular ones like fuchsia and penstemon, offer nectar to hummingbirds. Benign neglect of gardens leaves old seedheads for winter consumption and unraked leaves for scratching through for the food they hold. Even without bird-edible fruits and seeds, plants feed insects, which become the main source of protein for songbirds around the world. Native plants are usually best, as they have evolved with the birds and insects of the area and usually support them most effectively.

Cedar Waxwing and American Robin

Of course, avoid pesticides and herbicides. At worst they poison the birds, and at best they kill off the birds’ food source.

Plants also offer shelter. Some birds roost high in trees, others in shrubs, still others on the ground under brush. If décor and fire safety call for pruning up, consider retaining some low shrubbery for sparrows or quail. Woodpeckers carve numerous holes in dead wood, creating homes used by many bird species. You may choose not to leave whole snags standing, but just a standing trunk can invite excavations that bluebirds, wrens, flycatchers, titmice, nuthatches, and swallows will readily use.

Western Bluebird Male

Those familiar cavity-nesters will also use home-made nesting boxes. To find bird-house directions, at wintuaudubon.org see Places to bird/Attracting birds. In our area, it’s best to mount your birdhouses in shaded areas.

Ash-Throated Flycatcher

Of course, ensure that your yard is as feline-free as possible. Outdoor cats kill 15-20% of North American birds every year, including nearly 50% of suburban fledglings.

Water remains the elixir of life. A shallow pan, refreshed every day, makes an easy start. A trickle of running water invites many more visits. Small pumps are inexpensive and can run a home-made fountain if electricity is safely available. For permanent pools, mosquito-fish are available from Shasta County at (530) 365-3768.

Consider commercial fountains carefully. Songbirds prefer shallow puddles; a sloping edge will accommodate birds of different sizes for both drinking and bathing. Steep edges inhibit use.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Birds have lost vast swathes of former habitat. The wildfires are hardly the worst of it. If we can curb the super-sizing of them, fires are natural, and the cycle of light burn and fresh regrowth benefits many species. The more devastating disruption is the permanent and widespread habitat conversion of historical oak woodlands, wildflower fields, and riparian meanders into row crops, monoculture orchards and tree farms, pavement, and buildings. Now climate change is expected to further eliminate half the seasonal range of 314 North American bird species. It’s a tough time to be dependent on an ecosystem.

We can shape our yards to offer the food, water, and shelter that will help many birds still find homes.

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Tag Archives | Oak Titmouse