Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy has been partnering with the Virginia Bluebird Society for many years now as we develop and manage bluebird trails across Loudoun county, monitor nest boxes, and report our data to VBS so it can be analyzed regionally and further reported onward at the national level to the North American Bluebird Society.

It’s a great activity that not only has helped bring back the Eastern Bluebird but has also served as a great way to learn about our local cavity nesters.

Bluebirds (as well as Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Tree Swallows and others) will start nesting in the next couple of weeks so if you’re interested in learning more about this, this is a great time to jump in and see what happens through the spring and summer seasons.

To learn more, the Virginia Bluebird Society develops a great newsletter pertaining to nest box monitoring and the different bird species we encounter when we monitor boxes and the latest issue has just come out. This issue has a nice spring checklist for getting nestboxes ready for the season as well as information on predator guards and other bluebird news. Check out their website to view their newsletter – both current and past issues.

And, if you’re interested in doing some bluebird nestbox monitoring here in Loudoun – either by setting up a couple of nest boxes at home or joining one of our teams that monitors at public parks and other locations, check out our Bluebird nestbox monitoring page.  There’s also all sorts on information and some fun and games provided on the page that you can download.

I just saw a write-up on an email from Journey North on some migration activity just south of us and thought it’d be neat to share. This time of year is so filled with anticipation – when will we see the first bluebells, when will the first tanagers and vireos arrive, will the red-breasted grosbeak visit the feeder as it pushes through our area, what will my first butterfly of the season be? Oh, it’s just so much fun!

Anyway, in line with all that, here’s the report from just south of us on birds that are coming our way!  Let us know what migrants you’re seeing – and report it on the Journey North website too – it’s pretty cool to be part of this citizen science project!

From Journey North:

“There has been a lot of migration this past week! The rain last week didn’t slow the birds down for long, and the strong southerly winds helped bring in a lot of new species…It was a pretty good week in the eastern US, with people along the Alabama coast seeing the most. They reported seeing many White-eyed Vireos, Worm-eating Warblers, and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, and people in Louisiana reported their first Indigo Buntings. Here in Tennessee, the first Purple Martins showed up at my study site, and I heard the first Blue-headed Vireo of the season. Blue-headed Vireos also showed up in both Carolinas. The southerly winds have also helped push the first Tree Swallows and Northern Rough-winged Swallows up into Pennsylvania.”