We have a few of our nests with baby bluebirds in them. Here is a photo Mark took of the new arrivals. He must have caught them just as they hatched because not all of the eggs are hatched.

The last week of May we noticed a sink hole on #6 South fairway right in front of the green. Unfortunately this sink hole was not a little one but a rather big one. Here is a Corey Goedken, South Course Superintendent standing in the hole. He is over 6'3" tall! Well long story short there were 2 24" culverts that went under this fairway, both of these pipes were compromised with holes in them from rotting out. So the decision was made to replace them.



The bentgrass and bluegrass sod was stripped off the construction area and we laid it in the parking lot on plastic to try and re-use it once we completed the pipe installation.



Old pipe was removed and 2 new 24" plastic ADS N12 Pipe was installed. Here is a photo of that pipe, take note on the size and depth that it had to be. We also got rid of the collection area on the right side of the fairway. Now there will be 2 surface inlets instead of the old open lateral hazard area.



Correll Contractors started early on Monday morning and stayed late to get the pipe in the ground. We had to haul in 6 dump truck loads of black dirt to bring everything back up to grade. We wanted to get it all rough graded headed of the upcoming rain. We finished about 9:00 last night and it is raining this morning.

Every year we do put out nest boxes trying to attract some bluebirds. Last year we successfully attracted some and they fledged some little ones. This year Mark Sparland the Administrative Assistant for the maintenance department has been very diligent in his efforts to keep out unwanted birds and leave nests that have signs of bluebirds. This past week Mark got a positive nest and he was able to take this photo. Pretty cool to see Mama on her nest. Hopefully we can attract some more.

Each year we host a group of local bird watchers who I think are excellent amateur ornithologists. They come out every year on the same weekend, they get up early, they brave the elements and they search all over Des Moines Golf and Country Club looking and listening for different species of birds. They compile a list each years. When this first started back many years ago our results were part of the Audubon's Birdwatch Open. At that time they were trying to track and predict bluebird activity across the US. Now our results are sent in electronically over the Internet to Cornell University and the results are posted right away. This lets the experts track almost to the minute the activity of bird migration across the US. We want to thank our group of local experts,especially Ben Taylor our former administrative assistant who organizes and sets up this fine bird watching group.

Here is the list that they compiled this year.

> Canada Goose 16
> Mallard 11
> Blue-winged Teal 5
> Great Blue Heron 2
> Osprey 1
> Cooper's Hawk 2
> Red-tailed Hawk (Eastern) 1
> Killdeer 3
> Spotted Sandpiper 5
> Rock Pigeon 2
> Mourning Dove 13
> Belted Kingfisher 1
> Red-headed Woodpecker 1
> Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) 1
> Least Flycatcher 3
> Eastern Phoebe 6
> Eastern Kingbird 11
> Blue-headed Vireo 4
> Warbling Vireo 5
> Blue Jay 7
> American Crow 2
> Tree Swallow 21
> Bank Swallow 20
> Barn Swallow 32
> Cliff Swallow 18
> Black-capped Chickadee 6
> White-breasted Nuthatch 4
> House Wren 1
> Ruby-crowned Kinglet 5
> Eastern Bluebird 1
> American Robin 120
> Gray Catbird 1
> Brown Thrasher 3
> European Starling 2
> Cedar Waxwing 2
> Orange-crowned Warbler 1
> Nashville Warbler 1
> Common Yellowthroat 1
> American Redstart 2
> Palm Warbler 2
> Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 34
> Chipping Sparrow 12
> Song Sparrow 1
> White-throated Sparrow 10
> White-crowned Sparrow 5
> Northern Cardinal 6
> Red-winged Blackbird 36
> Common Grackle 57
> Brown-headed Cowbird 19
> Baltimore Oriole 14
> House Finch 1 Male
> American Goldfinch 2
> House Sparrow 1
>
> View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S14071377
>

Golf Course & Driving Range Conditions

Due to the unusual weather, the golf course and driving range will be CLOSED on Saturday, May 4. The Pro Shop will be open tomorrow from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The status of the golf course and driving range for Sunday, May 5 will be determined by 8:00 a.m., Sunday morning. Thank you for your understanding and we wish you all a pleasant weekend.

Finally caught a break in the weather and we have been able to perform a lot of our routine spring maintenance tasks. The wet weather that we have experienced the past couple of weeks has really hampered or slowed us down in doing some of these tasks. I thought I would take the time to detail a few of those routine things that we try to do in the spring of the year.

One of the first things that we do in the spring of the year is measure “Growing Degree Days”. We are able to do this with our weather station. GDD are a measure of heat accumulation used by horticulturist to predict plant and pest development rates such as the date that a flower will bloom or a crop reach maturity. For us that crop that we are trying to target is “poa annua” on our fairways. We know at a certain GDD, we are able to apply a growth regulator to stop or slow down the development of that poa plant’s flower. If we can control it, we hopefully can reduce it’s population.



We also use GDD to help us predict when it is time to apply our fertilizer and pre-emergent crabgrass control to our fairways. Here you can see Seth applying it to the fairways with our Lely spreader.



One of the things that I love to do in the spring of the year is verticut or vertical mow the greens. We do this to remove some of the excess of dead leaves that are in the turf canopy. When we verticut, it stands up the turf to cut it off cleanly, this leaves a groove to in the canopy for us to apply sand topdressing and hopefully make a smoother surface. This is also a very good time to apply our spring fertilizer to the putting surfaces.



After a long season of heat last year and a long winter of snow removal we have some areas that need to be fixed up or restored. The sod producers are finally cutting sod in the Des Moines area and we got some of the first cut material in. We are repairing stump holes, snow plow damage and some of last year’s summer stress spots.



Hard to believe we are now into May and there is a prediction for more snow tonight into the weekend. Hopefully this will be short lived and we can still squeak out a good spring golf season.