Audubon & Bluebirds

As promised, here is the last of the updates on current hot topics here at Winchester. Many have noticed that some bird boxes have been installed around the course. These boxes are designed and installed specifically for bluebird nesting, although they sometimes are used by other small birds like tree swallows and house wrens.

Building, installing and monitoring these boxes has long been a personal passion of mine and, fortunately, the property of Winchester and the values of ValleyCrest lend themselves perfectly to continuing this hobby. We at ValleyCrest encourage every property we become partners with to participate in the Aububon International Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses. Involvement in this certification program by no means obligates a course to become 100% organic, or go "all green", but merely provides helpful resources, guidelines and assistance in encouraging courses to become more aware of their maintenance practices' interactions and effects on the environment and wildlife habitats. In all honesty, most all superintendents I know love and respect nature and the environment (it's why most of us have these jobs in the first place!) so participation in this program is often occurs naturally and with very little extra effort.

Part of the Audubon certification process is to complete some environmental and wildlife-related projects on the course. Building and monitoring these bluebird habitats fit that niche perfectly. During the winter, while stuck inside during rain storms, we built 9 boxes to start with. They were installed about a month ago, and you can see already that Winchester's birds have taken a liking to them.

This box is located on #17 near the maintenance building. We build these side doors for easy monitoring and you can see a bluebird nest here is nearing completion.

And as of this morning, the box on the driving range near the pitching green already has the start of a family! The mama bird was sitting on these eggs as I opened it, but flew away before I could get a picture.

We'll continue to provide you with updates on the birds and these boxes, as well as other parts of the Audubon certification program that we will continually be working on.