Bluebirds 2011 #1

After breakfast this morning,while looking out my kitchen window, I saw a pair of Bluebirds checking out the prospects of our backyard. We have a Bluebird nesting box, but it is in dire need of repair, having lasted five years and about 6 nesting pairs of both Bluebirds and Wrens.

It is a nice solid box, one of a pair that my friend Walt built for himself and graciously gave me one. We were both construction workers at the time and our Birding conversations always got us strange looks and comments from the guys; How could you possibly be a construction worker and talk about birds?

Anyway, after my wife Candy found a simple blueprint for a nesting box from the National Bluebird Society: http://www.nabluebirdsociety.org/eastwestbox.htm , we decided to build two for our backyard. How hard could it be? 

So we broke out the tools, after a short trip to the local Home Depot http://www.homedepot.com/ to pick up some lumber, and proceeded to start our ambitious plan to populate our backyard with, hopefully, two pairs of Bluebirds this year.

We bought the required screws listed on the plans but they turned out to be too big for the wood, so we ended up pre-drilling the holes and using galvanized nails. Sanding and painting will start tomorrow and hopefully by the end of this week we'll have some new homes for our backyard friends.