By Keith Ashley, Tucson Audubon’s Paton Center Coordinator, and Jonathan Horst, Tucson Audubon Restoration Ecologist
When we hear about people transforming bird habitat, it’s often for the worse—but not in this case.
In early February a troop of Tucson Audubon volunteers mounted nest boxes for Azure or Mexican Bluebirds on two of the Sonoita Wine Guild’s vineyards in an effort to strengthen this vulnerable population of the Eastern Bluebird subspecies, Sialia sialis fulva. At the same time, students from the University of Arizona, under the direction of bluebird researcher Dr. Renee Duckworth, mounted boxes at four more vineyards. In total about 50 new nesting cavities are now available to this tiny bluebird colony of southeast Arizona.
The collaborative project is dubbed “Win-Win for Azure Bluebirds and Arizona Vineyards” to emphasize its reconciliation ecology dimension: a conservation project with potential economic benefits for wine growers and the region. A stronger population of bluebirds could serve the vineyards as free and natural pest control. They might also draw more nature enthusiasts to the region through positive publicity around using land wisely to support both human and avian interests.
And, with this project, the “Wins” just keep coming. Dr. Duckworth studies the dynamics of bluebird range expansion, inheritance of behavior, and a host of related ecological factors. Tucson Audubon is striving to ensure that our conservation efforts can augment her research, while her research strengthens our conservation efforts by informing us of the experimentally determined best practices for supporting the Azure Bluebird—the largest and palest subspecies of Eastern Bluebird, which happens to be a year-round resident in our region.
Yet another significant “Win” is the small band of dedicated volunteers moving this project forward. For several months now Joe DeRouen of Oro Valley has been the carpenter genius behind our experiments, providing several different box types: the Carl Little, the F-30, and the top-opening box Dr. Duckworth uses for her bluebird research in Montana. Many volunteers have helped to assemble the kits Joe cuts, though recently the lion’s share of assembly has fallen to Gary Prosch. Behind the scenes, Rick Fletcher has taken on some administrative duties, helping Tucson Audubon’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds to become an official affiliate of the North American Bluebird Society. Lorry Wendland, Lois Manowitz, and Jim Dolph are generously contributing their prior knowledge of bluebird trails and boxes, dexterity with GPS, photography skills, availability to mount and monitor boxes, and citizen conservation ethics.
A final “Win” would be to have your help! Several of the folks on our monitoring crew are snowbirds and will be migrating to cooler climes in the late spring. The project could use a few more people to help with the weekly monitoring of boxes. If you would be interested please contact Keith Ashley: kashley@tucsonaudobon.org or Jonathan Horst at: jhorst@tucsonaudobon.org.