Bluebird numbers suffer storm shock

The Central Alberta bluebird population has taken a hit from the recent bad weather.

Only one of seven nesting pairs spotted in the area of the Ellis Bird Farm by biologist Myrna Pearman just before the late-April storm and cold spell is still around, she said on Tuesday.

Jim Potter of the Alberta Conservation Association found three male bluebirds and one female dead in a nesting box on his Pine Lake area property. The birds apparently perished while sheltering from the storm and ensuing cold.

Potter found them when checking to ensure the box hadn’t been invaded by flying squirrels, as it was last year.

Instead, he found the four casualties of the cold snap.

“That cold stretch lasted about two weeks,” said Potter.

“There just wasn’t enough food for them to eat.”

The cold weather meant no bugs scurrying about the trees for the bluebirds to eat, and they are not seed eaters.

Potter thinks the combination of no food and the relentless cold left the birds run down and they simply couldn’t survive.

He said he’s noticed there seem to be very few bluebirds around now and wishes they would only wait a week or two more before returning from their winter hangouts.

It’s not the end of the bluebird, though, said Potter.

“It’s happened before and it will happen again,” said Potter.

“It’s just one of nature’s little catastrophes.”

Pearman agreed that while very serious, the low bluebird numbers do not mean the end of the bluebird.

“They are very resilient,” she said.

“But it’s the worst I have seen in my 21 years at the Ellis Bird Farm.” Pearman manages the facility.

She said in 2003, which was also a bad year for bluebirds, it was noticed that the birds were often laying seven eggs, rather than their more usual five or six.

They may do that again.

Male bluebirds routinely mate with multiple females and in a normal season, it’s common for females to raise two batches of young birds.

Those birds that did survive the cold might have too late a start for that to happen much this year, said Pearman.

Some may have ridden out the cold weather and the storm by hunkering down in the slightly warmer climates offered by Red Deer or Lacombe, said Pearman, and bluebirds have indeed been spotted in those communities.

But like Potter, she is confident the little birds will survive.

“I hope there will always be bluebirds,” said Pearman.

Contact Penny Caster at pcaster@reddeeradvocate.com