An Eastern Bluebird brings a meal back to its nesting box at Halfway Pond Conservation Area in Plymouth. Photo by Ken Grille.
By Rebecca Cushing, Stewardship & Volunteer Coordinator
Wildlands Trust works hard to protect and maintain meadow habitats where native birds, pollinators, and other wildlife thrive. Across several preserves with meadows, including Davis-Douglas Farm, Willow Brook Farm, Sylvester Field Conservation Area, Phillips Farm Preserve, Eel River Preserve, and Cushman Preserve, we have placed nesting boxes designed for Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows. A small group of dedicated volunteers have monitored, cleaned, and maintained some of these boxes for years—but until this year, we have lacked a consistent way of collecting data and managing all of the boxes to best support our bird populations.
In March of 2026, our Stewardship & Volunteer Coordinator, Rebecca Cushing, worked with staff and volunteers to create a structured nesting box monitoring program. The Adopt-A-Birdhouse program will guide us in better management of our nest boxes, including weekly monitoring to collect and report meaningful ecological data and engage our volunteers in citizen science. During this nesting season from March through August, volunteers visited nest boxes and used NestWatch, an online database created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. NestWatch is a global citizen science effort, and data from the project has been used by scientists for long-term monitoring of nesting birds and can be used to document the effects of climate change, noise and light pollution, and other factors affecting breeding birds.
A Tree Swallow pair settles into a Wildlands nesting box
This year, our volunteers monitored 46 nest boxes across 6 preserves. These trained volunteers made an average of 15 visits to each box throughout the season, carefully performing nest checks. It was a rewarding season—with at least 185 eggs laid, 109 young observed, and at least 66 young observed having fledged their nests. We will continue to grow this program in 2027, furthering our work in our commitment to protect and support the wildlife we love.
If you are interested in joining the Adopt-A-Birdhouse program, or to discover other ways you can volunteer with Wildlands Trust, reach out at volunteer@wildlandstrust.org.
