Hello, Trileigh and Tweeters,

At the Dungeness River Audubon Center at Railroad Bridge Park in
Sequim, we followed Bushtits nesting during the breeding seasons from
2002 through 2007, mostly in big oceansprays, Holodiscus discolor.
Four of these six years (2002 - 2004, and 2006) a pair (pairs?)
nested in the exact same oceanspray right next to one of our main
pathways, always building a new nest every year. The remains of
each year's nest hung in the same bush close to their new nests, but
the old nests were obviously dried up and decayed by the time the
next breeding season rolled around. As far as we could tell, the
birds didn't seem to touch their old nests, as the nests stayed
intact through the following years and some of the nests' dried
remains still hang in the bush to this day. Like nearly all open-
nesting birds, they build a new nest each season, because old nests
fall apart through the winter and probably have parasites left over
from the previous breeding season.

In 2005 Bushtits nested in another oceanspray on the opposite side of
the same pathway, within about 50 feet of the other bush. We have no
idea if they were the same birds since they weren't banded, but they
were very attached to that spot.

Bushtits did not nest in that area during the 2007 breeding season.
In fact, 2007 was the worst year in the last six for Bushtit nesting
that we've seen at RR Bridge Park. We only located one nest in the
whole park in 2007, whereas during other years we usually found 3 or
4 nests. We noticed a distinct decline in Bushtits on our Wednesday
morning bird walks after the snows and windstorms in November and
December, 2006, although the number of Bushtits on the 2006 Sequim-
Dungeness CBC was still slightly above the average for the last 10
years.

I don't know about the hole at the bottom of the nest, but the nests
we've seen where chicks successfully fledged looked like normal nests
with just the regular entrance hole, so it suggests that something
other than a Bushtit made the hole you saw.

Bob Boekelheide
Sequim



Bob Boekelheide
Sequim

From: "Tucker, Trileigh" <TRI at seattleu.edu>
Date: August 10, 2007 10:23:16 AM PDT
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Tweeters] Bushtit nest design and reuse?


Next to a path in Lincoln Park is a beautiful thick bushtit nest with
a round hole at the bottom. Would this have been made by a predator,
since usually the entry/escape hole is at the top? Or could this have
been made by the bushtits themselves?

I'm also wondering whether bushtits reuse their nests in subsequent
years?

Happy birding,
Trileigh Tucker
West Seattle



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