at Chadron State Park

By Lawrence Fuchs, Belden

It all started at BAN’s annual meeting for county coordinators Feb. 20 at Raymond, where the head-honchos selected me to line up a meeting room for a fall BAN workshop at Chadron, to arrange for coffee and goodies and try to arrange for some publicity at that time.

I got to thinking (a bad sign already), “How in the world are we going to sell memberships to Bluebirds Across Nebraska (BAN) this fall if people out there don’t even know what a bluebird is?” So I called Bill Siebert in Omaha. . . Bill thought it was a good idea and wished me luck. Next I called Steve Eno at Raymond, who said he would furnish the larger boxes required for mountain bluebirds. Next I called Niobrara Park Supt. Tom Molacek, who said he knew Chadron Park Supt. Wayne Kelley . . .and [Tom] gave me Kelly’s phone number and address. When I called the Chadron Park office, they told me that Marjorie Jorgensen of Sidney had also called that morning about the fall workshop.

. . .Unknown to me, at the Kearney coordinators meeting (a week after our Raymond meeting) Roger & Marjorie Jorgensen, BAN’s Cheyenne County Coordinators, were also asked to set up a fall workshop at Chadron. She was glad I also was on the project and she asked me to set up the meeting room for Oct. 1 as they were wheat farmers and Roger wanted to put the wheat in prior to a BAN workshop.

When Wayne called me back he was excited about getting a trail established, because he had worked at Platte River State Park, where there were lots of eastern bluebirds and that he now had two boxes at his house with mountain bluebirds in them. I informed him that we would need to have the boxes monitored weekly and he said that would be no problem as he had people willing and waiting to monitor trails of boxes.. . .

We decided on March 22 to build a bluebird box trail at the park where the Jorgensens would join us. In the meantime, Eno agreed to bring in advance to my place in Belden 25 mountain bluebird boxes. I asked him to also bring along 15 eastern bluebird Gilwood boxes which I extend the floor 3/4 of an inch to enlarge them from a 13-square-inch floor to the 17 square inches needed by mountain bluebirds. I had previously called box-designer Steve Gilbertson in Minnesota and that is what he recommended for mountain bluebirds. I then made 10 Gilwood style boxes, but with slot openings and with full 2x4 floor. We had all of these, plus 20 MORE boxes and poles to be taken out to the Scottsbluff County Coordinators, Al & Lois Herbel. It was a full pickup load!

Fellow Belden bluebirder Duane Krueger agreed to drive my pickup and would be great help on a trail-building team. [Due to a snow storm, the March 22nd project was postponed to March 30] when the Jorgensens would meet us at 2 p.m. Duane and I arrived three hours early. We killed some time before heading out to the park to “case the joint” and see what we had gotten ourselves into. It looked fantastic! Roger and Marjorie showed up, also early, so we loaded them up with the boxes and poles to take back to Scottsbluff and put some of ours in the ranger’s pickup and headed up the hill.

By 5 p.m. we had set out 35 boxes when the Jorgensens took off so they could get home, since it looked like another storm heading our way. we set up a few more boxes, put the remaining ones in the ranger’s pickup (to be put up later) and headed for the Super 8 and the café for supper. Boy, did we ever work up an appetite.

The next morning we drove out to Chadron State College because I always wanted to be able to say “I went to Chadron State.” It is a beautiful campus set against pine trees on the hill to the south.

We got home about 3:30 p.m. with the nice feeling of a very fruitful trip. AND I got to see mountain bluebirds. They were hovering above a buck brush patch, diving in for old grasshoppers. That was great! Now you too can see these beautiful birds – just take a tiny jog of Highway 20 out to Chadron State Park next time you go west on vacation.

On May 10, Lawrence reported: “I had a call from Wayne Kelly, Supt. of the Park, and he informed me that he has 2 young, 36 eggs, and many nests started and he was very excited – most of them are eastern bluebirds – but will check better when time allows.”