Flickers, Nest Boxes and What's Singing Today!

The big news for The Verdin News today is that I heard a verdin singing this morning. The weather is spring-like here, and has been for weeks, so a spring song seems appropriate.

To be truthful, I've heard verdins sing a couple of other times this winter. They seem to play their song occasionally even in regular winter weather. But with our daily high temperatures reaching the high 60s to 70s F for at least the last three weeks, it just seemed right to hear the verdin. The song is a couple or a few notes, sometimes all on the same pitch and sometimes with the first note higher and the rest about a major third lower. Listen to the sounds a verdin makes (the one I heard is described here as the "spring mating song").

Gilded flicker, female

I was at Tucson Audubon's Mason Center this morning with a group of volunteers helping us to make experimental nest boxes. I was able to get some photos of a pair of gilded flickers that came in to the snag behind the office where we have a feeder.

The flicker visit seemed appropriate since they make nest holes and, well, we were making nest holes too. Gilded flickers are one of the two species (along with Gila woodpeckers) that make holes in our tall, columnar saguaro cacti. Many other birds end up nesting in the cavities they excavate.

Gilded flicker, male

But gilded flickers retreat from even fairly low-density development. Plus, there aren't as many saguaros in developed areas, so nest holes are at premium in the city. Add to this the fact that we formerly had some lowland forest associated with streams that have disappeared due to ground water pumping, cutting firewood or erosion. Those trees also often had holes made by Gila woodpeckers or ladder-backed woodpeckers.

Some species have hole-nesting birds have dwindled, perhaps simply for a lack of holes. We're trying to see if increasing the number of holes helps. If we figure out how to be successful, maybe we can start a successful public campaign like those for bluebird boxes in the eastern and mid-western United States.

Keith and Bill make an American kestrel box

Our experimental nest box pilot program will put out approximately 60 boxes and gourds to see what will nest in them. The conventional wisdom around here has been that nest boxes don't work--they get too hot. But we have heard anecdotal stories of success with boxes. We want to see if we can come up with the right nest box design and the right placement of the box so that they can be successful for some hole-nesting species. This spring we have two box sizes, one for American kestrels (that might also be used for western screech-owls) and one for ash-throated flycatchers (which also may be used by brown-crested flycatchers).

We've also heard about successes with gourds as nest sites for Lucy's warbler, one of only two hold-nesting North American wood warblers.

This is all part of Tucson Audubon's Urban Program, raising awareness of birds in the urban area, reducing threats to bird and improving habitat.

It's been a challenge to get these boxes made. But we have many volunteers eager to host the boxes and monitor them to see if some of our native birds use them. It will be exciting this spring to see what happens!