Blue Bird Trail

The Garden Club of York has two Bluebird Trails!

Who flew?

Our first Bluebird trail in 2025 was at the Country Meadows Retirement Community, in the Shiloh area of West York, where we monitored seven boxes.  Now, we monitor a second trail of 15 boxes at Cousler Park in Manchester Township.  Who flew?

See the table below to find out what we observed in the nesting boxes on both trails. House Sparrows, House Wrens, Bluebirds, Tree Swallows and Chickadees are all cavity nesting birds.

What did we find?	Country Meadows 7 boxes	Cousler Park 15 boxes
# House Sparrow nests taken out	28	66
# House Wren nests taken out	0	2
# Bluebird nests	5	9
# Bluebird eggs	12	34
# Bluebird young	11	24
# Bluebirds fledged	11	20
# Tree Swallow nests	2	5
# Tree Swallow eggs	6	15
# Tree Swallow young	6	12
# Tree Swallows fledged	4	12
# Chickadee nests	0	0
# of GC members who monitored	9	9
# of weeks boxes were checked	19	19

We record what’s in the boxes as we walk the trails, so there’s a record of activity from week to week.  It’s often a mystery as to what took place in a box from a previous visit, so besides seeing the eggs and chicks, this makes the walk all the more interesting. We observed eggs and chicks missing, a House Sparrow nest built on top of a Bluebird nest, eggs that never hatch, and even dead birds, both adult and chick.

It could be the heat, House Sparrow or House Wren invasions, other predators, or parents not making it back to the nest to feed their young.  We can only speculate what could have happened.

The boxes are monitored from the first week in April until the last week in July and even longer if there are young birds still in the boxes.  Young birds may still fledge, but we’re really at the end of the nesting season in August.

We’ll clean out all the boxes this fall and continue again to monitor the boxes on both trails next April.  Garden Club of York members can peek into the boxes and monitor the progress of Bluebirds and other cavity nesting birds next year, by watching Sign-Up Genius for the schedule. 

Learn about Bluebirds and get your steps in too! Come join and see how busy these little birds are. It’s truly a miracle to see when that little Bluebird or Tree Swallow lays four to seven eggs in the tidy little nest she built. Who flew!