Loyd Csizmadia
Bluebird Route Coordinator, Williams Lake Field Naturalists
Concerned about the use of pesticides to control grasshoppers in the 1970s, Williams Lake Field Naturalist Anna Roberts approached the ranchers of Becher’s Prairie with an alternative: mountain bluebirds.
They agreed to test her idea, so in 1977-78, the Williams Lake Field Naturalists initiated the Becher’s Prairie Resource Management Plan.
Funding from the Agricultural and Rural Development Act paid for the construction of 474 nest boxes and two summer students.
In addition, 16 field naturalists volunteered to install, monitor, repair, and clean the boxes on six routes. During the first year of the program, 36 mountain bluebirds, 22 mountain chickadees, and 135 tree swallows occupied the nest boxes. Breeding bird data was recorded and then sent to the BC Nest Records Scheme at the provincial museum in Victoria, B.C.
Forty-seven years later, the Williams Lake Field Naturalists continue to support the Mountain Bluebird Program. Twenty members manage nearly a 1,000 nest boxes on 23 routes.
Most routes are located throughout Becher’s Prairie and off of Meldrum Creek Road, as they were in 1978, but other routes now exist closer to Williams Lake, and others still can be seen along Dog Creek Road to the Empire Valley.
Potentially, each nest box fledges 10 birds per year. So, a thousand boxes might annually add 10,000 songbirds to our skies. Furthermore, some non-members also manage routes with the support of the Field Naturalists, adding even more. On the routes where data is collected, tree swallows continue to out-number mountain bluebirds, but both species are breeding successfully.
Occasionally, both black-capped and mountain chickadees build nests in a few boxes. Unlike in 1978 when 253/474 boxes remained empty, today almost every box is occupied. As for the grasshoppers, spraying no longer appears to be an issue.
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