Stan and Tweeters,

I visited the Kunde Road clearcut Monday afternoon (April 9) in
between showers, and had nice looks at both the male and the female,
which perched together briefly near the gated road which leads through
the middle of the cut. The Killdeer were there and were making quite
a racket, but I didn't find the nest.

Thanks very much, Stan, for reporting the presence of these bluebirds.
This is the first time I've seen this species in Western Washington
away from the Fort Lewis area. With the recent nesting record on
Whidbey Island and your other sighting near Darrington, perhaps
it signals a return of this species to breeding grounds it once
occupied in NW Washington and SW British Columbia.

Was the nest box at Kunde Road put up by you? I noticed nest boxes also
in a couple of other nearby clearcuts. If so, we owe you a lot for your
efforts to bring back this species, as well as your long-term efforts on
behalf of Purple Martins.

By the way, establishing nest boxes in clearcuts has been very
successful in increasing numbers of Eastern Bluebirds in
Mississippi (a heavily forested state). I took part in a project in 1979
which was tracking nestbox occupancy and success of E. Bluebirds
in clearcuts, and I was amazed at how successful this project was.
Maybe with time and a bit of luck, it will work for Western Bluebirds
in NW Washington.

Wayne C. Weber
Delta, BC
contopus at telus.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "stan Kostka lynn Schmidt" <lynnandstan at earthlink.net>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 7:50 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Snohomish County Killdeer on eggs


No luck locating the Kunde Road Bluebirds during a short visit to the
clearcut this afternoon, but we did notice a Killdeer moving
about, just beyond the end of the gravel road. We backed off a
distance, and in time the bird returned to reveal the location of
its nest, which contains two eggs.

Stan Kostka
lynnandstan at earthlink.net
Arlington WA