This post continues the story of the bluebirds and the filickers battle over the tree hole nest site that I observed in May of last year. It was reported in my Catch of the Day message of May 20, 2015.

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This morning Paul Masur and I went back to the old burn on Goats Peak, to look for Mountain Bluebirds and to check the trail camera that I have there. It was left monitoring a possible nest hole in a tall Ponderosa Pine stump. As we approached the site, a flicker few away from the tree hole and we assumed that flickers have driven the smaller bluebirds away. We removed the memory card from the camera and put it into a small camera that we were carrying, hoping to see that some bird pictures had been recorded. We did see that the card had stored a number of pictures, at least some of them showing flickers but it was not until I got home and put the card into a card reader in my computer, that I got the full story. From a total of 297 pictures that had been recorded since my last visit on the 12th of May, it was possible to construct the following story: (Please note the times printed on the pictures. Unfortunately they are all out by one hour, as I still have the camera's clock set for Standard Time.)

A picture taken at 4:30 AM standard time on May 12th shows a pair of Mountain Bluebirds, male and female, at the tree hole.

Within seconds a female flicker arrived and the bluebirds took flight. (Male Red-shafted Flickers sport a red mustache-like mark.)

   At 4:34, A male flicker arrived and looked into the hole.  At 5:23 the female arrived and entered the nest hole. At 6:12 the male flicker arrived and entered the hole  and at 12:15 PM, the male flicker   again goes to the hole while the male bluebird flies in to attack the much bigger bird.

 It seems that birds were often able to leave the nest hole without triggering the camera, as it recorded more bird arrivals from the nest hole than departures. I am assuming that all of the pictures are of just one pair of flickers and one pair of bluebirds.

During our visit today, we saw several other bluebirds but all at a distance. We did a bit more scouting, hoping to locate a pair successfully nesting but without success. I will continue my efforts to find a nest on my next visit to the area. Next time I will try to remember to bring my binoculars, which unfortunately had been forgotten today!