Hi Tweets,

I was hoping to find some nests with eggs when I set out on the mountain bike to check Bluebird nestboxes yesterday afternoon, and I did, a six egg clutch. What I was not expecting to find was another pair already feeding young, which I estimated to be about five days old. Through 2009 the earliest clutch initiation date we had ever seen was May 10. If my estimate of the age of the young I observed yesterday is correct, then figuring 13 days incubation, beginning the day the next to last egg was laid, that five egg clutch would have been initiated on about April 22. That's by far the earliest ever recorded in the nine years of this project. Does anyone out there have any info on early dates for Western Bluebirds in Washington ? As always, will be interesting to see how the season goes.

Stan Kostka
lynnandstan at earthlink.net
Arlington WA