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After weeks of wintry weather, Rockbridge Bird Club members are channeling spring with the program “Nest Box Birding: What Monitors See and Do.”
Three Virginia Master Naturalists who collect data for the Virginia Bluebird Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Nest-Watch program will describe their experiences nest monitoring along trails in Rockbridge County next Tuesday, Feb. 25, in the Piovano Room at Rockbridge Regional Library. The evening program, free and open to all, begins at 6:30 with a social gathering, followed by the slide show presentation at 7.
Presenters include club members Bonnie Bernstein and Aileen Spurgeon, joined by Victoria Deppensmith from Buchanan.
Bernstein, a Master Naturalist with the Alleghany-Highlands chapter, founded the erstwhile Rockbridge Bluebird Conservation Project in 2013 and continues to organize and train trail monitors. She has monitored on the Washington and Lee campus, Woods Creek trail and at Boxerwood.
Spurgeon, a former Alleghany Master Naturalist, has a decade of experience monitoring nest boxes along Woods Creek, on the Skyline Trail at Natural Bridge State Park, and on her own property. She has also guided third-graders participating in Boxerwood’s “Birds for Thirds” nest-monitoring program at Central Elementary.
Deppensmith, a Master Naturalist with the Roanoke chapter and chair of Friends of the Blue Ridge Peaks of Otter Chapter, took over the monitoring of nest boxes on the Skyline Trail in 2022.
After briefly explaining “why we bother the birds,” and describing protocols they follow to minimize interfering with breeding activity, the three will share stories and images of the more interesting and dramatic encounters they’ve had with box-nesting birds and their predators. They’ll close with a brief discussion of trends they’ve observed over the past decade in the populations of local cavity-nesting birds.
