u/twitchx133

This pair is raising their third brood in my yard, in the Charlotte area. Of course the brood had to hatch on the 30th, the literal day before the heat dome set in. I've been trying to offer them as much help as I can, have a bath with a fountain that I have been replacing the water in 2-3 times a day to keep it cool, offering live mealworms to try and minimize their energy spend foraging, but its still been rough. It sucks seeing them struggling so hard

The pair nesting in my box are on their third brood of the year after successfully fledging all 10 babies from the first two broods.

Thankfully these 4 are still okay! But they gave me a bad scare last night and kept me up most of the night. They are 4 days old today, so nowhere near old enough to not have their momma on them at night, but she didn’t show back up at dusk. Our peak ambient temp was 102 yesterday. Between the heat and fireworks, I think it stressed her too bad to come back, but I have seen both her and the dad feeding them all morning this morning!

Female blueborb sitting on her third brood in my camera nest box

Not the best angle, he was intent on hanging out at the very top of the tree and it made for very awkward setup with a big prime on a tripod... But these guys have been skunking me for about a month now, could always hear them, but never see them

Found this little guy about 20 feet of the trail at a local park. Stopped and took pictures of him for about 30 minutes, got a few awesome shots of his parents feeding him too! With how many times they fed him giant dragonflies over that 30 minutes, it was easy to see why he went from eastern kingbird to eastern kingborb

I found this fledgling Eastern Kingbird about 20 or so feet off the trail at a popular park in town. He sat there for quite a while, I watched him for at least a full 35 minutes. Mom and Dad were close by the whole time and I got to watch them bring some bugs in for lunch a couple of times. They were even bold enough to chase away the errant Blue Heron that got too close.

I recently got upgraded on my birdfy nest. I had an original nest duo, and it started malfunction a moth or so ago while this momma was still raising her previous brood. I swapped the old box for the new one when the fledged a few weeks ago and she is now spending her first night brooding her third brood of eggs for this season.

One of the several updates Birdfy made from the gen 1 to gen 2 nest boxes, the white light why had inside was replace with an infrared light for night vision without disturbing the residents.

Got a motion notification only to find this funny look staring back at me under the infrared lights.

I’ve had a nest box up in my yard for a few years now and never seen these two (at least I’m pretty sure it’s the same pair that keeps coming back) raise more than 2 broods in a season. This week they started on #3 after ten successful fledglings this year.

The bluebirds nesting in my Best Duo over this season and last season have started on round three for this season! Their last brood fledged a week ago on Thursday. I swapped the nest box with a new gen 2 that Birdfy sent me to replace a gen 1 that was unreliable over the weekend and they started building yesterday afternoon.

The previous two broods were 100% successful and they had 10 fledglings total between them!

Got to watch this little guy being a nut, hanging upside down for a little bit. There was something (bugs I am assuming?) on the bottom of the leaf that he was chowing down on. I also saw a Tufted Titmouse doing the same thing, but wasn't really able to get a good photo of it

Birdfy sent me a gen 2 Nest Duo to replace my very unreliable original Nest Duo, but I haven't put it up yet because the bluebirds that were in my box just fledged yesterday.

With some lessons learned from the original box, I spent a couple of days making some modifications to the new box to make it better suited for the hot, North Carolina sun. The thin walls and black painted side (that faces south for bluebirds, that like the entrance hole to face east) would cause the inside of the nest to become very nearly lethal, sometimes I would see temps of 105-107 on the temp sensor in the camera.

I started by painting the exterior of the box with a high reflective value, white exterior paint. Then I found a "PVC handy panel" at Lowes for 30$, similar to a Sintra project board. It's a closed cell, expanded PVC foam that is paintable if desired. Hoping it will last longer than the plywood I used for the previous box.

I created a handful of stand off's to space the handy panel boards out about 1 inch from the south and west sides of the box, and added a larger roof on top to try and keep rain out of the box a little bit better.

With the double walls on the previous box, I had seen the temperature in the box drop by 5-9 degrees on the sunniest of days.

Now, to replace the box on the same pole and hope my bluebirds come back for brood three in a week or so!

I'm going to leave this stream up for a few hours from now, probably until 11:30 EDT. These 5 babies are 17 days old and getting very restless. One Almost fledged already this morning, but managed to wiggle back into the box.

I'm expecting them to fledge either this morning or tomorrow morning based on how active they are and the previous broods this pair had this year and last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ3XJYIPbfA

Edit:

First baby fledge at about 10:00 AM EDT

going to keep it up to 12 or 12:30 PM EDT at least, keeping an eye on the battery condition. Expecting that if the rest don't fledge by early afternoon, they are likely not going to fledge until tomorrow morning.

Second edit... Well, the remaining 4 still have not fledged yet and it looks like the live stream crashed due to the network bugs that Birdfy has been having for the past month or so.

Finally after a couple of weeks, some of the babies that I believe are from the brood that fledge out of my nest duo about two weeks ago have come back to the feeder. Of course, demanding to be fed!

Man, I just can’t get over this lot of Tac 22. Mentioned in my previous post that it was always mid tier for me, 1.2-1.5 MOA in the past at nest, and somewhat inconsistent. Went to the range with a buddy today, and this ammo just kept slapping, another sub-MOA average day.

Clipped a couple of the better groups in ballistic-x and the whole target card to show I’m not crazy cherry picking. Only one group out of the 9 that wasn’t great.

Was insanely thrilled with a sub MOA ten shot group at the end.

Went and bought two more bricks of it from my local academy on Sunday, would have liked to have bought them out, it would have only been like 3 and a half bricks total, but not sure I could justify 400$ in ammo to my wife in one weekend. Even with the rumors that Tac 22 is discontinued. Got lucky and it was all the same lot number too.