Nesting Bluebirds
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- June
- 1
I spent nearly two hours one afternoon this week out in the field with Sandy Morrissey as she checked on her bluebird boxes. Over the last 10 years, she’s put up dozens of nesting boxes at golf courses and cemeteries around central and lower Westchester.
Tom Nycz, one of our photographers, and I were out with Sandy for an upcoming story for the paper and a TV segment for our “NewsCenter Now” show that we produce with RNN.
Sandy pretty much single-handedly has brought bluebirds back to parts of the county where they haven’t been seen in 25 years. She’s a real inspiration on how one person really can make a difference.
Up above is a photo of five new bluebird babies in a box that she set out at Scarsdale Golf Club in Hartsdale. She checks on them every few days.
Amazing, aren’t they? It’s hard to believe they’ll be out and flying in just two to three weeks.
The male and female bluebirds were swooping all around us as they gathered up tasty worms and caterpillars for their babies. Here are a couple of Tom’s photos.
Here’s Tom getting a closeup of the brood.
And here’s Sandy.
We also went to Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, where she’s got two active boxes. One has five perfect little blue eggs that should hatch any day, Sandy says.
Last year, she had 19 nesting pairs around Westchester.
Here’s a link to a previous post that I wrote on bluebirds, with a couple of great closeup photos of nesting bluebirds by Frank Becerra that he shot in his Brewster back yard.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
