Subject: Spring Update
Date: May 11 09:32:19 1996
From: Teresa Michelsen - tcmnem


The second wave of spring has sprung today with several new additions to our
yard - orange-crowned and Wilson's warblers, both singing, and our first
olive-sided flycatcher. We too have had a tanager or two in the last few
days and are still experiencing the evening grosbeak "event" which has been
going on for about two weeks. What fun to watch flocks of these beautiful
birds fly around - another yard "lifer".

On a really exciting note, our resident male pileated woodpecker has found a
mate and they are nesting in a snag within easy viewing of the house. We
have gotten much better looks at these birds than usual as they bullet past
our house and over the yard going to and fro from their nests.

Bird atlasers take note, I don't know if anyone is still doing King County,
but this is a new "confirmed" record for this area. Also new is a confirmed
siting of chestnut-backed chickadees nesting in a hollowed-out knot in a
large bigleaf maple. Finally, I am upgrading the western screech-owl from
"possible" to "probable" on the strength of several months of hooting every
night in our forest during Spring. Hope to add more data as the summer goes
on. Atlas coordinates are T26N, R4E, S13.

A question for birdhouse builders - we built two violet-green swallow houses
with the oval-shaped hole and mounted them under the eaves. The
violet-green swallows visit our yard every day and swoop around, and seem
very interested in one of the houses - but never quite go in. They fly
right up to it, hover a few inches away, then swoop around the yard, fly
back, hover, etc. They do this over and over. Sometimes they sit in the
crest of the roof just above the birdhouse and chatter. Only twice have we
actually seen them alight on the small bar we put below the hole as a perch,
and only for a second. We have never seen them go in. We were wondering if
there's something wrong with the house that we could fix. There doesn't
seem to be anyone harrassing the birds, a starling came by and investigated
the birdhouse early in the season but quickly realized it had no hope of
fitting in the hole. I haven't seen it back since.

The house is mounted about a foot under the eaves on a west-facing wall,
which gets plenty of sun and has no trees blocking the way, a very open
area. The hole dimensions are 3.5x7/8 in., and is 3.5 in above the floor
and 2.6 inches below the peak of the roof. The peak of the roof overhangs
about 3 in (we were wondering if that was the problem). The box itself is
5x5x7 (lwh). Any advice is welcome!

Teresa Michelsen
Kenmore
tcmnem at halcyon.com