South Carolina Bluebird Society

Donations and Membership Dues - Where does the money go?

A small amount of income pays for ink, copy paper, supplies for the trail monitor notebooks and trail buckets and outside printing. The bulk of our income has been used to purchase new nest boxes, repair old or damaged nest boxes or to buy materials to mount nest boxes on metal poles with metal baffles and netting where snakes or raccoons have been a problem. Some examples include:

1. Lyman Meadows where bird production had fallen to nearly zero last year year due predation. This Winter we removed all nest boxes from wood poles and placed them on metal poles with baffles and netting at a cost of $234. All 9 nest boxes were occupied and all young birds fledged. The success of this system was against a Black Rat Snake at Lyman Meadows. We feel bad for the Rat Snake because they mostly do good work, but this one was on his way to make a "Happy Meal" out of four baby Bluebirds.

2. Steeplechase Track has recently had four nest boxes raided by a raccoon(s). This week these nest boxes were removed from trees and wood posts and placed on metal poles with baffles and netting at a cost of $104.

3. Blackberry Hill is experiencing what appears to be both snake and raccoon problems. We might have to change all of the nest boxes to metal poles(or something else) and baffles next year. We have been assembling an experimental mounting system using a 4" x 30" section of PVC pipe as a baffle with netting, mounted on a 3/4" x 5' metal pole anchored in the ground on a piece of rebar. Our hope is that the pipe is too large in diameter for raccoons to hold on to and too slippery for the snakes. A couple of these will be placed at Blackberry Hill and we hope to get some late season nesting in them. If this works it will reduce the cost of $26 each for the systems at Lyman Meadows and Steeplechase Track to around $10 each.