Of course, everyone knows curiosity killed the cat. But what about birds, what does curiosity do for birds?

A few weeks ago I was in my photography blind set up by the Kestrel box waiting for the parent Kestrels to return, or alternatively, waiting for one of the baby Kestrels to come to the hole in the box to look for the parents to come feed them. While I was there a young male Hairy Woodpecker came down the pole and discovered the box. (photo 2)

Purple Martins are colonial nesters. When I first read that fact as a young Boy Scout in my earliest days of birding, I wondered what Purple Martins nesting in the pre-Revolutionary War American Colonies had to do with their then current nesting habits. Not too long after that I learned that “colonial nesters” meant that Purple Martins nest in colonies in close proximity to each other.

And now, many years later, we are maintaining a good-sized Purple Martin colony of our own: 144 gourds in a combination of natural and plastic gourds configured just the way Purple Martins like them, with long necks and spacious round bowls

It’s June again, time to head to Maine for the annual (five years and running) attempt to photograph baby Loons riding on their parent’s back. After eight days of exhaustive searching we found only one active nest with a Common Loon incubating eggs on an old derelict unused dock. On this same lake in past years we have typically found five or six nesting pairs.

Also, contrary to past years, when we found nests with an incubating parent (yes, both parents incubate the eggs, unlike duck species, where only the female stays on the nest) the other parent was always in the water patrolling close by. Unfortunately, this year we saw only one such instance, while on a number of other occasions pairs of Loons were travelling together, suggesting their nesting efforts had already failed.

The particular lake we surveyed has suffered considerable fluctuation of water levels as this has been the wettest spring in years. Consequently, it is easy to surmise that other Loon nesting attempts this year have been flooded out as Loons typically nest inches above the water level and right at the water’s edge.