The birds that visit my feeders have given me much joy in the time of Covid. I’ve enjoyed their company and the connection they provide to the natural world. As with so many other folks, my only forays into the world is the weekly grocery shopping trip. Having a group of wild creatures visit is well worth the cost of a few bags of black oil sunflower seed.
Yesterday I noticed that a Carolina Wren was checking out a space under the lid of the propane tank. Nesting time has arrived.
This year I was prepared. I built several simple birdhouses following the designs available from The Cornell Lab Nest Watch website.
I built two of the Carolina Wren houses which I mounted on my two wood sheds. They are brave birds that won’t be spooked by my presence. I also built two House Wren and two Eastern Bluebird houses from the Cornell designs.
I walked around the yard and used a fence post driver to pound in solid steel fence posts for mounting the other houses. Since these posts lacked mounting holes, I came up with the idea of using two foot lengths of electrical conduit PVC to drop over the posts.
There was a bit of play in the PVC collar and the birdhouse needed to be stabilized. My solution was to add a self-tapping screw to tighten it down. The houses are in place and for rent. Watch this space to see who takes up residence.
I watched a pair of chickadees checking out the wren house. They seemed to be having some difficulty with the 1 1/8 inch hole so I enlarged it to 1 1/4 inch.