Calgary Area Nestbox Monitors
Brief Early History
Bluebird trails in the Calgary area have been around since 1973. From 1973 to 1975, Harold Pinel, a City of Calgary Naturalist, set out 400 nest boxes (most on Hwy 22) at one half mile (0.8 km) intervals from Chain Lakes to Calgary, and then Calgary to Sundre and then to east of Didsbury. He published the results from the years 1973 to 1978 in the Blue Jay, the quarterly bulletin of Nature Saskatchewan, which was then (and still is) the foremost nature magazine of the Prairie Provinces. He also published a summary of these results in the Sept. 1980 issue of the Blue Jay.
In 1979 he had to abandon the project due to time commitments. Don Stiles informally looked after many of these nest boxes that year with the help of a few people from the Calgary Field Naturalists' Society. Some sections which had no bluebirds, or had many house sparrows were abandoned (Chain Lakes to Turner Valley, Indian Reserve, and a section around Didsbury).
In 1980, Calgary Area Bluebird trails were more formalized with most sections of Harold Pinel's trail taken over by others and three new trails included. I became coordinator that year. An article "1980 Calgary Area Bluebird Trail Results" describes the results for that year. An excerpt follows:
"Seven active monitors covered a grand total of 743 boxes on 379 miles of line which resulted in approximately 1000 Mountain Bluebirds and 2189 Tree Swallows being fledged. These included many of those set up by Harold Pinel in 1973 to 1975, by Andrew Stiles in 1977 to 1979 and by Blake Stillings in 1978 to 1980. Also included are 25 additional existing houses west of Longview monitored by Kay Morck."
Blake Stillings was a retired grain elevator agent. He monitored 312 boxes in 1979 in the Cochrane area (Westbrook School etc.) and monitored over 300 nestboxes each year from 1980 to 1990. He died on Mar. 12, 1991, just a few days short of his 79th birthday. Kay Morck was a prominent member of the Calgary Field Naturalists' Society.
Only myself, my sons, Andrew and Philip, and Ray Woods are still active from that time. George Loades, our monitor with the most boxes (-400), began in 1986. Calgary Area Bluebird Trail Results have been published annually since that time.
Submitted by Don Stiles
